"I don't like the look of this," Lilo said, glancing down.
"You shouldn't. You're going straight down unless you give me a very good reason why you were late. I told you I would tolerate no—"
"Stop it. Stop it! You can throw me down if you decide to, but I won't listen to any more threats from you. Damn it, I'm doing my best, and I want to be treated like a human being." She waited. Vaffa slowly released her hand. It seemed to take a great deal of effort.
"Thank you. Now we had a deal. I'm talking about the promise I made on the way here. You either trust me or you don't, and if you don't, what's the point of making deals?"
"I don't know how far to trust you. My instincts tell me not to."
Lilo shrugged. "Your instincts are right. But not right now. Our time will come later, I imagine. But I'm going with you to the Hotline, I've already decided that."
"Does that mean you—"
"Hold on. I'm not through yet." Lilo was breathing hard, and realized she was spoiling for a fight. She could not be a match for Vaffa physically, so it would have to be with words. She felt a bit light-headed; she had talked back and got away with it.
"You're driving me crazy, you know that? We're not a good match, and yet we've been constantly in each other's company. When I made that promise to you, I frankly didn't know if I'd keep it. But now I see the value of it, if you will honor it as I am doing."
Vaffa looked tortured. Lilo thought the blood ritual must mean a lot to her, and that Vaffa felt badly about not trusting someone who had gone through it with her.
"How? How can I trust you? If I was in your position, I don't think I'd ever think of anything but escaping."
"I didn't, at first. And it's never far from my mind. But I can give you two reasons why I won't be running now, and I hope they'll ease your mind, or else you might as well push me. First, I'm virtually certain you're not the only one of Tweed's loyalists here on Pluto. There's probably someone, maybe two or three, who follow us everywhere. Even if there's not, Tweed is operating on the assumption I'll assume there is. I think either one is just as likely, the first maybe a little more so. Anyway, that means if I ran I'd have no better than a fifty-fifty chance of getting away with it, not counting the things you'd do to get me back. When I run, it's going to be a lot better than that."
"And the second reason?"
"I don't know if you'll believe this one, so you'd better think hard about the first. But for the record, I'm worried, I don't like the sound of that Hotline message. I don't like it at all. I think someone had better look into it, and it might as well be me. So I want to go out and hear it for myself."
Vaffa lowered her eyes for a moment and rubbed her bare scalp. Then she nodded, and sat down cross-legged on the tree limb.
"All right. I'm... I'm sorry. I said I'd trust you, and I will from now on. On the same terms as before, though, don't forget that. If you betray me, I'll hunt you down and kill you, no matter how long it takes."
"That's all I'm asking for." Lilo sat beside her. She stretched out with her arms behind her head.
"So how did it go with the holehunter?" Vaffa asked.
"Washed out. He won't do it."
"What?"
"Put your shirt on. That's why I'm late. I had him that close. We were talking terms."
"Then what's the problem?"
"You. Oh, not you personally. You and Cathay. He flatly refuses to take more than one passenger. None of us can go alone, for obvious reasons, so the deal had to fall through."
"But why? I checked him out. His ship would handle four easily over that distance."
Lilo sighed. "I know. You have to try and understand what these people are like. They don't like people. It was torture for him to consider taking me alone. Three people scared him so badly he could barely talk."
"I guess I still don't understand."
Lilo tried again, because she didn't, either. "Put yourself in his place. He's spent most of his life alone on that ship. It's like part of his body. He's slowly going insane here on Pluto, and he knows it. To him, sharing his ship is as repulsive as..." she flailed her hands helplessly, "...I don't know. Sharing a toothbrush. Think of your own metaphor. He just won't do it, not for anything."
"Then we're back where we started."
Lilo pursed her lips, then turned her head and smiled.
"Nooo. As it happens, we're not. I hired him as an expert consultant. Gave him enough for a stake at the tables. Asked him the big question: Is there anyone who might do what we need, do it faster than we could do it ourselves by buying our own ship? Or was it hopeless? Would every hunter react as he did?"
"Go on. What did he say?"
"He gave me a name. No promises, you understand. But if anyone will do it, she will. She's crazy, even by holehunter standards. And I'm going up to see her in two hours, on the next shuttle."
"Why didn't you say so in the first... no, never mind. I suppose I can't go."
"That's right. No sense in spooking her with the three of us right off. This will take finesse."
"Then that's you, obviously."
Lilo turned her head, looking to see if the other woman had been trying to make a joke. That would be a first. But Vaffa's face was as stolid as ever.
"What's her name?"
"Javelin."
17
The singular personage named Javelin lived in her ship, the Cavorite, which was currently stationed at the Pluto spaceport—the real one, as opposed to the vast plain over Florida which was the landing facility for shuttles. It was a vast zone of space, but rather crowded, as the radar screen of Lilo's scooter showed. There were a thousand factories, power stations, mirrors, and farms; nearly all the heavy industry and a lot of the agriculture of Pluto. She was happy to leave the driving to the traffic-control computer.
The scooter mated with the lock of the Cavorite. Lilo was surprised at the size of the other ship as she climbed over the struts of the scooter toward the open door. It had looked strange coming in; most of it was engine and fuel tank, like any holehunter ship, but even that looked oversized. As for the lifesystem... could that be brass?
The lifesystem was streamlined, for no apparent reason. It jutted like a golden nipple at one end of the massive fuel-tank cylinder. It had none of the haphazard, strung-together look Lilo associated with deep-space vessels. It was a fat bullet, blunt at the nose and tapering slightly at the end. Four stubby fins were positioned equidistantly around the stern, where it sat on the fuel tank. The nose had a lot of glass in it, and round portholes were visible in a line down one side.
The lock seemed ordinary enough until she saw the big brass air-pressure dials with scrollwork needles spinning rapidly. She pulled open the inner door and cracked her helmet seal at the same time.
She sat in a small room, about three times the size of the airlock. There was plush purple carpet on two facing walls, while the other four were paneled in mahogany. Bolted securely to each of the carpeted walls was a deep leather-covered chair with a carved ebony table beside it. On the tables were Tiffany lamps, crystal ashtrays, and an assortment of magazines. Lilo stared at the dates; the newest one she could see was two hundred years old.