The trouble was, and worsened decade by decade, that the Empire recruited its defenders from an ever more motley set of human societies on Terra’s daughter and granddaughter planets. Like tended to settle down with like, and not to get along very well with unlike. The situation might have been happier, given more openings to the outside; but Daedalus, afar in a frontier region, was relatively isolated. Rivalries festered. Nonhumans had long since abandoned any thought of living in Paz.
She remembered her mother quoting a quip of her father’s: “The Terran Empire is a huge melting pot. However, what appears to be melting is the pot.”
After passing through a couple of hamlets where life seemed to go on about as usual, the road entered one whose walls were mortared stone underneath tile roofs. Nobody else was in sight. Doors stood barred, windows curtained or shuttered. Silence closed in, save for muttering thunder and the spat of raindrops on pavement. Shan U glanced around uneasily. “Best we make haste,” he counselled. “This section has suffered an outbreak of lawlessness, and peaceable people have withdrawn till the Navy can send a patrol.”
Four men came out of a lane and deployed across the way. They were dirty, unkempt, sour-smelling; beard stubble showed that two had not used any inhibitor for some time. One kept a pistol tucked under his belt, one flourished a club, one carried a knife, while a bola danced in the hands of the fourth.
“Well, well,” said the first. “Well, well, well. Just stop where you are, if you please.”
Shan U crouched, mewed, bottled his tail.
Chill crawled along Diana’s spine. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Oh, nothing bad, nothing bad.” They slouched and sidled forward. “Welcome to our fair com-mu-nity, little lady. How’d you like a good time?”
“Kindly let us by.”
“Now, now, don’t be in such a rush.” The pistoleer stroked the butt of his weapon. His free thumb he jerked at the bola man, who grinned and sent a ball whistling through the air. “Easy, take it easy. Just a friendly warning. You make a rush to get away, and Chelo here, why, Chelo hasn’t had any live target to practice on for days. That thing could break your ankle, lady. All we want to do is show you a real good time, and maybe have a little fun with the monkey-cat. Come along, now.”
Diana lunged. Her knife flew forth. It was Tigery steel, the back heavy and rasp-surfaced, the edge sharp enough to cut a floating hair. Suddenly the shirtfront of the pistoleer gushed red. He howled. She pushed him against the clubber. They fell together. She stepped on the Adam’s apple of the clubber, and heard it crack, in the course of attacking the knifeman. He slashed at her not unskillfully, but she parried, gave him the rasp across his face, and opened his fighting arm on the inside from elbow to wrist, after which he lost interest in anything but trying to stanch the blood. At this range the bola artist could not exercise his craft well. She severed the cord of a ball that snapped toward her, swayed back out of the way of the rest, and chased him several meters before letting him escape.
“C’mon,” she said through the ululations at her feet, “let’s get out of here ’fore the cops arrive.”
“Hee-yao!” gasped Shan U as they made off. “I thought I knew about handling trouble, but you—”
“Oh, I don’t go lookin’ for fights,” Diana said. “In fact, I hate them. I’d’ve tried to talk or bluff us past those klongs peacefully. But they weren’t listenin’. Well, I grew up amongst Tigeries on Imhotep, and when they see danger clear before them, they don’t shilly-shally.”
Targovi, I learned from you. Pain smote her. What has your fate been, dear brotherlin?
“Do you think the, the casualties will live?”
“I didn’t try to do anything fatal, but there wasn’t time for finickin’, was there? Does it matter?”
Beneath the coolness she felt a dull but strengthening shock. She hadn’t done anything like this before—not really—though Targovi had put her through lots of practice; and she had been around when a couple of Tigery brawls got bloody; and she had, herself, perforce been physically pretty emphatic three or four times when human males got the wrong idea and couldn’t be persuaded out of it otherwise. I’ll prob’ly have the shakes for a while, once the adrenalin wears off. But not for long, I hope. I mustn’t let what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, prey on my mind. Nothin’ was done here except justice. The war, now, the war is different, people killin people they’ve got no grudge against and have never even met. Though some wars in history have been the lesser evil, haven’t they?
I don’t know, she thought in rising weariness. I simply don’t know. How good it’ll be, floatin quietly down the river with Axor, if that works out.
She lost track of time and was a bit startled when they came to the waterfront. Warehouses bulked behind wharfs where a medley of craft lay tied and a hodgepodge of persons, human and nonhuman, bustled about. Machines scurried among them. Beyond, the stream flowed broad and brown. The opposite shore was dimmed by a thickening rain. Shan U registered a feline dislike of the wet, but Diana welcomed its warm sluicing. She felt cleansed.
They reached Waterblossom. The riverboat was easily a hundred meters long, though so wide that that was not immediately evident. Four loading towers and a couple of three-tiered deckhouses did not much clutter her. The low freeboard was garishly painted in stripes of red and gold; the topworks were white, brass-trimmed. Her captain had said she was made of Terran and Cynthian woods, which Daedalan organisms did not attack, and driven by an electric engine. Should he be unable to recharge its capacitors otherwise, he carried a steam generator which could burn nearly anything.
Half a dozen Cynthians and two humans were on deck, cheerily helping wheel a cage toward shelter from the rain. “Ay-ah, behold Wo Lia, the performer.” Shan U pointed. “Come aboard and meet her. We can all have a nice cup of alefruit cider.”
Diana frowned. She hated the idea of confining any creature. Still, yon beast didn’t seem mistreated. More or less mansize, it hunkered on four limbs, black-furred, its head obscured by a heavy mane. She spied a short tail, and the forepaws had an odd, doubled-up look about them. Well, who could possibly know all the life forms, all the wonders of every kind, that filled the Imperial planets, let alone the galaxy and the universe? To fare forth—!
Shan U led her over the gangplank. She passed near the cage.
“Hs-s-s, little friend,” went a whisper. Coming from low in the lungs, it sounded like an animal noise to anybody who did not know the Toborko language. “Stay calm. We will talk later. Make sure you and your camarado take passage on this boat.”
Barely, Diana reined herself in. The humans doubtless noticed how she tensed before relaxing, but could put that down to the exotic surroundings. The Cynthians doubtless paid no heed to her shifts in stance or expression.
She forced herself to look afar, out again across the river. Underneath tangled strands of mane, the face in the cage was Targovi’s.
Chapter 10
Waterblossom set forth after the thunderstorm that had been brewing reached explosion point and then spent itself. Sweeping the length of the valley with that swiftness and violence which the rapid rotation of the planet engendered, it turned the air altogether clear. From her place in the bows, Diana looked westward across a thousand kilometers or more.
This was the first tranquil moment she had had in hours. The time had been frantic during which she made her way back to Aurea, located Axor, persuaded him—not easily, because her arguments were thin at best, and her excitement didn’t reinforce them—to come along, got their baggage packed, returned through lightning-vivid cataracts of rain, settled into her tiny stateroom and improvised accommodations for the Wodenite down in the hold with the freight. Dinner had been served while the weather slacked off. Now the crew had cast loose and the boat was on her way.