She was sitting at a corner table, with a journal in front of her & a pen in her hand. She did not invite him to sit nor shoo him away. She merely stared at him, long enough that his already great nervousness grew greater.
“Soorap,” she said. “Doctor’s aid.”
She sat back & placed her hands, with a soft thump & a hard clack, on the table in front of her.
“I sincerely hope, Soorap,” she said, “that you are not here to discuss—”
“No!” he stammered. “No. Not at all. Actually, there was sort of something I sort of wanted to sort of show you.” Daybe scrabbled under his shirt. He pulled the animal out.
“Your beast I’ve seen,” said the captain. Sham held out Daybe’s leg, on which the tiny mechanism still protruded like a tick.
After her demonstration, Shikasta had been appalled at her inability to entice Daybe back to her, to retrieve the transmitter. She had waved, & it, of course, ignored her. “I ain’t going to get that thing back!” she had shouted. & Sham had had an idea.
He beckoned the bat for her, but when it got within a few yards, he surreptitiously altered his come-here motion to a get-away one, so, wary, Daybe would spiral off up again. Sham gave Shikasta his best shrug & apologetic eyebrows. “It don’t want to come,” he said.
“You better hope,” she said finally, all the unexpected friendliness of the last couple of days quite gone, “that no one clocks that there’s one fewer of these things. I’ll be in so much trouble!” Sham nodded humbly, as if it was his fault she had stolen it. “When your flying rat comes back, you take that thing off & get it back to me, alright?”
That evening, out of her ear- & eyeshot, he had whistled Daybe into his arms. Examined the clip on its leg. Whispering an apology, he had twisted it tighter. Now it would take a metal cutter to get it off. & here he was now, nervously pointing out a transceiver, or receptor, or receiver, or transceptor, or whatever the thing was called, while Daybe fiddled.
“One of my mates found this, Captain,” he said. “She showed me how you work it. There’s a, there’s this box like a, um, & it knows where this thing is.” Naphi’s face gave away nothing. On Sham plunged. Talk-tunnelled through the captain’s dirt-cold silence like a conversation-mole.
“I thought maybe it might interest you.” He gave a rambling & rattling description of what that odd thing did. “After what I heard—I was in the pub, Captain. It’s been an honour serving with you & I was hoping maybe you might let me do it again.” Let her think he was a brownnoser, & ambitious. Fine. “& I thought this might be of, like of help, you know.”
The captain tugged at the bat’s leg, hard enough to make Daybe squeak & Sham wince. Naphi looked intent. She was breathing a little faster than a moment ago.
“Did your friend tell you,” Naphi said, “where such items might be obtained?”
“She did, Captain,” Sham said. “Scabbling Street Market, it’s called. It’s on …” He hesitated, but where else did one get the cuttingest-edge salvage? “On Manihiki.”
Oh, she looked up at him then. “Manihiki,” she said. The most gentle & sardonic ghost of a smile haunted her lips for a few seconds. “Out of the goodness of your heart, you bring me this.” Still her mouth was haunted. It twitched. “How enterprising. How enterprising you are.
“This might be of use, true, Soorap,” she said at last. He swallowed. “It’s a possibility,” she said, “to be pursued.” She stared into space. Sham could almost see the train of her mind grinding over plan-rails.
“So,” he said carefully, “I just thought you might want to know there are those things on Manihiki. & if you’re travelling again, you know …”
“How did you find me, Sham ap Soorap?”
“I just heard you might be here,” he said. Was she having a tryst? he thought. He had barely stopped to wonder how badly he was intruding. “Someone said you were—”
“That I was meeting someone?” she said, & with that perfect timing, a person behind Sham said Captain Naphi’s name.
He turned, & it was not the secret lover he had momentarily imagined. It was Unkus Stone.
TWENTY-FIVE
AFTER THE SHOUTS OF GREETING, SHAM’S HAND still on the older man’s back, he realised Stone was limping, badly. That he supported himself on sticks.
“How did you even get here?” Sham said.
“Got better,” Stone said. He smiled, but it wasn’t what he wanted it to be. “Thumbed a ride on a Streggeye-bound carrier. A mail train. Legs gammy or not there are things a trainsman like me can do.”
“Hello, Stone,” Naphi said.
“Captain Naphi.”
The silence became excruciating.
“Should I go, Captain?” Sham said. But I’ve only just got started, he thought. I had you all interested in my salvage! We was getting somewhere! Next thing we’d have been going somewhere!
“What are you here to tell me, Stone?” said the captain.
“Rumours,” Stone said. He met Sham’s eyes & glanced at the doorway, inclined his head.
Sham got the message. Despondently he turned & walked towards the door. He tried to strategise as he went. But there was a scraping sound, & the captain said his name. She had pulled another chair into place.
“If it’s rumours,” she said, “I’d not be so foolish as to think that any trainsperson wouldn’t soon hear it anyway.” She pointed, with her bone-&-metal-&-wood finger. “& I’d not be so mean-spirited,” she said, “as to make her, or him, wait any longer than necessary.” Sham bowed thanks, heart racing & sat. “So. I appreciate you being the conduit of whatever it is you’re conduiting, Mr. Stone.”
“Well,” said Stone. Coughed. “We’re being followed,” he said.
“Followed,” said Naphi.
“Right. Well, you are. Or were. See, Captain, I was in bed for a long time, back on Bollons. But after a while, I got up.” He shifted. “Did a few odd jobs. Got to know the nurses. Some of the people around. Got to hobbling myself around the area. Got to knowing the byways, & the—”
“Do please,” said Captain Naphi, “expedite this journey relevance-ward.”
“So one of the fruit-sellers I knew was asking me who were my friends.” Stone almost stuttered in his efforts to speak quickly. “He says there’s people asking about what happened to me. To us. Asking for information. Said they’d heard something from someone, from a woman who’d heard about something we’d found …” He shook his head & shrugged. Sham swallowed, & shrugged, too. I don’t know anything about that either! he managed not to yell. “They were asking about our journey. The wreck. About the crew. Asking about you, Captain. First I thought it was all nothing.”
“But,” Naphi said.
“But. See, when I got on that mail-train to come back, after a couple of days, there’s a little train behind us. Miles off. A smart engine, a single-car & whatever it’s burning’s not putting out much exhaust that I can see. Top-notch quality. I know a good vehicle when I see one, & it should’ve been going a mad clip. But it stayed the same distance behind us. For way too long.
“Even then, I might not have thought anything of it. It was gone after a while. Except I saw it again. & not only that.
“We were in a plain. No hills, forests, nothing. Nowhere to hide. I saw it again, & then there was another. Keeping their distance.”
“Following you,” the captain said. “Even assume that were true, surely everyone knew where you were going?”