But the Hound shakes his head. “Nineteen metric years. I can count. I’ve enough fingers and toes for that. Which means this is something you must do. How much more abandonment do you think she can take? You’re a Confederate. You know the Weapon of the Long Knife. Do you think only Those know how to wield it? ‘It’s a big Spiral Arm,’ they say. But if you fail in this, it is not big enough to hide you. Do we understand each other?”
The scarred man knows misery. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I think I do.”
“No. The Names… My mind…”
The Hound’s head dips, rises again. “I saw the neuroscanner results, the emorái. That will make your task more… challenging.”
“If you employ a defective tool and it fails—”
“Then I discard the tool. But it is better that you fail than that another succeed.”
In the performance space, the harper is playing Bridget ban’s Theme and the scarred man curses her under his breath, for she, too, is forcing him into this role. Pushed by Zorba’s threats, pulled by Méarana’s music, what other possible course is left him?
“We’ll both die,” he groans.
“That would be better for you,” says Zorba de la Susa, “than if only she does.”
AN AISTEAR
Curling Dawn was not a Hadley liner, but she was going in the right direction, and so the harper and the scarred man bought passage on her as far as Harpaloon. It gave Donovan sullen pleasure to use the chit that the Kennel had given him. If he was to be forced to tramp the Periphery, he may as well do so at Kennel expense.
The Grand Star ship was a throughliner, a flyer-by. She came out the Silk Road from Jehovah at just under Newton’s-c and crossed the coopers of High Tara toward the Rimward Extension on a two-day transit. She would not stop or descend to the capital. Rather, the bumboat Cormac Dhu had been boosted up the crawl to match trajectories with her as she passed through. A high-v match in the coopers was never entirely routine, and the scarred man, still nettled at Zorba’s threats, took some pleasure in describing to the more nervous passengers with whom he shared the bumboat all those things that could go wrong.
“If the rendevoo manoover is soo dangeroos,” a scowling businessman from Alabaster said, “why doo soo many use it?” Like most people from his region, he heightened his back and central vowels, a favorite trope for comics on a score of other worlds.
“Shortens trip for most,” said another passenger; this one, an elderly woman from the Jen-jen. “Imagine if throughliners must crawl down to planet, then crawl up again! Why—longest leg of trip is Newton’s crawl! Such time-waste!” She gave the scarred man a sidelong look. “Even if some exaggerate risk.”
The bumboat latched onto the throughliner with much clanging and hissing before the airlock doors pulled open from the connecting gangways. Disembarking passengers from Curling Dawn entered through the rear doors and embarking passengers left Cormac Dhu through the front. The liner and the boat had so synchronized their gravity grids that almost no one stumbled as they passed through the shipways. But even with the stewards shepherding people along, embarkation was a confusion.
The scarred man fell back until he stood at the rear of the throng, and when he reached the threshold, he hesitated. It was a small step to cross it, but a bigger one than he had taken on leaving the Bar of Jehovah. Then, he had offered to escort Méarana only to High Tara, intending to return once the Kennel had talked her out of her foolishness. But far from discouraging her, the Kennel had given her tools by which to pursue her doomed quest. Donovan had half a mind to step back, allow the air locks to close, and catch the next ship to Jehovah.
The problem was that the other half urged him forward.
Let’s go. It’s something to do, said the Brute with what was for him irrefutable logic.
We owe her our help. What if she encounters some danger on the Roads?
“If she does,” Donovan said with acid in his voice, “we’ll hold another debate like this one—which may not prove much help to owe her. Damn it, we can’t even go through a door without a lot of bickering.”
This is our last chance to turn back. Once we board, we’re committed.
Tell me something I don’t know.
<Remember Zorba’s promise,< Inner Child cautioned them. <There’s no safety in turning back, either.<
But what finally brought the scarred man aboard the throughliner was not the Brute’s boredom, nor the fear of the Inner Child, nor the idealism of the Silky Voice, nor even the Fudir’s nostalgia, but his realization that the harper, too, had hesitated, just for a moment, at the brink.
That sort of unspoken doubt deserved support.
Although the Kennel had deep pockets and the chit would have enabled them to travel in first class, Donovan had booked them into third. He and the harper found their adjoining cabins on H-deck, where the hum of the idling alfven engines gave the gray walls a mild shiver, as if the ship were a living thing trembling with anticipation. The section steward—a Terran—delivered their trunks shortly after, and the Fudir tipped him generously in Gladiola Bills of Exchange and whispered certain instructions in his ear. After that, he waited for the harper to complain.
Which she did soon enough. She strode through the connecting door and threw herself onto the day couch in Donovan’s room. “Was this the best you could do?”
“Be memsahb so accustomed to luxury? Much sorry no satin pillows, no silk sheets.”
“No taste, either. I don’t mind cheap so much as tacky.”
The room was done up in tired colors, and the bunks and bureaus might be called Spartan had the Spartans been a less festive and sprightly folk. The Fudir shrugged.
“This be best ship in Grand Star Lines, missy.”
“The best ship of a second-rate line.”
“What of it? It’s not like second-rate is the worst there is. How many lines are of the first water?” He looked around the cabin. “This isn’t so bad, actually,” he assured her. “Donovan and I, we’ve traveled in accommodations far less splendid.”
“You haven’t seen my cabin. But I wasn’t talking about the accommodations.”
“I’ll switch with you, if you like. Besides,” he added as the harper made a gesture that meant nichevo, “there’s a certain freedom in traveling third. For one thing, you meet a better class of people. And there are fewer obligations. If we’d gone first class, we’d be expected at the Captain’s Dinner, assigned to one of the deck officers’ tables.”
“Oh, the horror!”
“Yes. ‘Better to live unnoticed.’ A Terran in first class is bound to excite interest, and never of a proper kind. Half the sliders will go out of their way to snub me; the other half will go out of their way to prove how oh-so-tolerant they are. Either way, I would stand out. Throw in an ollamh of the clairseach and tongues will wag from stem to stern. That could prove a nuisance when the time comes.”
“I was complaining about her speed,” the harper said. “She’s only a niner.”