CHAPTER 20

It was Greyesar who determined the ship's course. The day before they set out, he left an itinerary on Huey's pillow. At breakfast Huey said, appropos of nothing, "Beta system first, Grey. The route is vastly more scenic--not so many mudflies, hm? Will the exigencies of commerce permit?"

Greyesar did not answer to the name Grey, but a revised memo appeared, stuck to Huey's mirror. Clark found the Outlander in the control room laying out the course according to it when he went there to compose a reply to the note the counter had slipped him at the Uchides'.

The captain's screen was crowded with symbols that grew, shrank and disappeared altogether as he plotted ways around the obstacles and risk foci they represented. Little signs decorated the course line with advice like, "Call me at this juncture," that Huey wrote in for his first mate. These signs had realside analogues in bits of paper stuck to the sundry dials, meters and eyes with such comments as, "This will beep if it wants you," or "Leads switched--port side reading here." Greyesar adorned the hold in similar wise, with reminders like, "Keep tempor pressure constant, check for browning," over the storage chambers. Each of the two comrades had taken the work to which he was least suited. It was a scheme that must drive them together and make each always aware of his dependence on the other, yet they could barely speak without arguing, so that Greyesar fled the control room when Huey came and was himself banished from the hold. Clark wondered as he surveyed the control room what Paula would have thought of the communiques. He laughed. She would have pointed out that the only one who read them was Clark.

Pondering several alternative ways to tell the counter, "I was called away," Clark fretted over human nature. He doubted that Marlow Maxwell would endanger his relationship with the Uchide by double-crossing them on the matter of the transit pass. As soon as they guessed he knew Paula was dead, Maxwell would become useless or worse to the Viyato, so he had every reason to wish Clark success. Or so it seemed to Clark's understanding. Depending on what else they had on each other, Maxwell and the Viyato could still be working in concert. Almost the moment Clark left his office, Maxwell had reported the whole interaction to Malenyk Uchide, but he might have done the same for Nicolas Viyato. For that matter, their houses stood so close together that if the Viyato had their windows open they might have overheard Maxwell's call to Malenyk Uchide.

Most likely it didn't matter. Maxwell himself probably didn't know which side he was on and wouldn't until the winner had been declared. Clark bounced to the counter's access address on Reshecomp and found a standing message. It was a clip from a news tape, saying he had been injured in an auto accident. Police were investigating. The counter, smiling in his hospital bed, said he held no one to blame. Could have been anyone, anything, Clark thought, but he felt sure that he had lured the man into some misstep among the violent rush of schemes that surrounded him. Perhaps Clark should intercede with someone...could have been anyone, anything. He left a greeting and went below.

Down in the hold, he arranged and re-arranged his equipment, rigging his landing suit with enough dead-man explosives to level a house if his heart stopped for more than a minute. When the soft fabric was stiff with paraphernalia he put it on and wore it, though he stopped short of activating the explosives because getting out of the suit when it was fully boobytrapped would require a day's work with a simucardiophone and dousers. The suit was hot, and so heavy that he could barely walk. After a few hours he took it off again, and when the critical time came it was lying in a box in the control room.

Sometimes he practiced fighting with Greyesar, though the Eyimalian was a poor teacher. "Duck, not roll, you idiot!" he would shout, or else it would be, "Roll, you bonehead, don't just duck!" and then a punch. He lost his temper and swung blind until Clark ran away, then he would cool off and sulk.

"I don't know what to do with you," he told Clark once while they peeled off their sweaty clothes and sprayed themselves with cleansing solutions. "You don't have speed, strength, or control. You're small but clumsy. If you are challenged, I recommend that you run. Can you aim in a mirror?"

Clark redeemed himself by learning to shoot with a mirror and a backlighted Puro at targets behind, beside and above without turning. When the ship's way was clear, Greyesar exercised in front of him while he did this.

"Why does Huey leave so many notes?" Clark asked him once. He saw his poker face in the mirror. Greyesar was lying on the floor with his legs raised.

"To reassure himself."

"Why doesn't he run the ship, instead of you?"

"He doesn't want to go where we're going."

"Then--"

"Of course his wishes have no meaning. But he prefers my being in control."

"Why--"

"Hugh has decided that the drug market does not suit his tastes. Therefore, I have taken command," Greyesar said. He exhaled slowly, letting one leg descend. "When we leave the pathway at Paffir Eket, however, I will need his assistance."

"Assistance?" Huey repeated when Clark asked him about it. "That idiot couldn't make a bird fly. As long as the course is locked in, the ship pilots itself."

Huey was re-wrapping a load of green powder. He stopped occasionally to wipe his hands on his pants.

"Do you want get out of the drug market?" Clark asked.

"I want to die usefully."

"Then it doesn't matter what business you're in."

"I used to think so--in, in, in we go," Hugh muttered to his work. "No one tells you how to be useful, alas. If you need to be told, you could be anybody, as Paula would say."

"You are useful," Clark objected. "The money you raise--"

Huey sneezed. Green dust puffed up around them, obscuring their faces like mist. "I don't think the industry is optimal for our purposes. It does drag one down. Cause or no, I lack enthusiasm for giving righteous ardor to kids."

"But you don't."

"Mother Lightning, wrapped in shiny ribbons. I sell it to parents. If you do nothing else, you can give your little one a day in mortal paradise. Birthday presents, for the most part." He sat down on a vacuum pump. "When I first came into this business I worried unceasingly, but distractions have interfered of late. Perhaps I shall leave it to take up my worrying in a more solitary spot."

The best are taken and the worst are taken, Clark thought. If Huey were ever caught and tried, the question of which he was might occupy learned conventions for years and years. He said, "You know, Isadora Maxwell came in to Marlow's office and tried to shoot him while I was there."

Huey beamed. "A friend revealed! What happened?"

"She missed. I didn't know what to do."

"Steady her hand, by all means. Although you needed the fellow, didn't you?"

"I took the Puro away from her."

Huey laughed. "You're an order-loving soul."

"She knocked me down, just like that. I guess I wasn't watching. As soon as Marlow touched her, she fell apart." He brushed the green powder from his knees. "First she tried to kill him, then she knocked me over, then she sat down and cried."

"An eccentric couple," Huey said.

"Well, they were like Paula. Their life together must have been-- unrelieved."

"The two of them?"

"The three of them. No distraction."

Huey laughed again, choked on the dust and had to lean against the bales while he caught his breath. "A house of perpetual immiseration. If Paula Maxwell were my daughter... I would have to have been a father at an indecently tender age, I suppose."

Huey wandered off to the nether parts of the hold. Clark went back to the control room to pore over the files taken from Maxwell's office. He found some clues, probably outdated, to Sevit's location.

Paffir Eket boasted two landing fields registered with the Interplanetary Travel Office, a planet-to-planet one on the smaller continent where Clark and the rest had not been, and one for ground-to-ground craft near the Lir. The interplanetary field handled Love's Arrow traffic, it appeared. Recently an Outlander family who worked there tried to cut in between the Ketry and Var by hiring a ship ofther own to carry their private crop to market, and the Viyato had called on Maxwell for help. Interplanetary Security promptly arrested the maverick ship, for which the Viyato thanked Maxwell, but then Security hovered around the planet for weeks while the family's most lucrative business withered.

It must have been an interesting time, Clark thought, with the Viyato and Ketries trying to swell the legal shipments to keep their traffic volume at its normal level lest the dropoff give them away, the Security officers trying to get hold of Love's Arrow either for evidence or as a bribe, and the Outlanders trying to make new alliances with Security and Saroka Var. It was the first time their Outlanders had shown such independence and the Viyato were apoplectic. They wanted the death penalty instituted for whatever charges Security could bring against the maverick ship's crew, and when Maxwell refused to take up this cause they informed him that he would be expected to pay the full cost they incurred in capturing his daughter. As things grew calmer they took back this threat, let the Outlanders make it up to them, blamed everything on the Ketries and, among other things, took Sevit into their own care at the ground-to-ground site by the Lir.

He must be in the capital. Small as he was for an Eyimalian, Sevit would be too hard to explain anywhere but at Lir Temple where Pahid, at least, had seen Eyimalians in his "visions".

Clark dragged Huey up from below, saying, "I want to raise Tiyar."

"Terrestrials are too skittish for that, I'm afraid. The best I can do is leave a standing response to his signal."

They rigged the signal to an alarm and waited. One night Clark dreamed he was at his parents' home. As the family embraced, a siren began to keen. Clark's mother paled and vanished. He woke. The alarm had gone off.

Clark ran to the control room, where Greyesar was jumping Tiyar's signal to the main communication system. The bright spot on the finder screen, showing the origin of the call, was as big as a province. "Isn't there any way to find out where he is?" Clark asked.

"Ask him." Greyesar turned back to the map he had been scriving, but stayed in his seat near the com.

"Hello. Where are you?" Clark called.

A small voice answered, "On the road to the capital. At the head of a mob. Listen." Distant noises of chanting, quarreling and fighting struggled to be heard. The voice returned, saying, "We are strong. We will seize the export and the capital will fall--"

"Don't do that," Clark cut him off. "The export isn't kept there."

"We will destroy Lir Temple."

"We don't need to. We can destroy--we can get rid of the Viyato at the source, on Eyimalia. All we need is a planetary representative and some evidence."

Tiyar said, "All right. Are you bringing arms? We need projectiles, polly, gas and firebloom, dewblast, little Puras, aircarts. We will roll across the land like a ball of fire and explode in the valley--"

"Did you understand what I said?"

"Yes."

"Tiyar!" Greyesar called.

"Yes?"

"This is Greyesar."

"Greyesar, this army would be worthy of you. Each soldier here is fiercer than ten of the best Eyimalian revolutionaries. Greyesar! It has taken all my strength to guide them."

Greyesar looked over his shoulder. "Who can you talk to down there?"

"Akiva."

"Tiyar, shut up," Greyesar directed. "Let us talk to Akiva."

"--alone!" Tiyar was shouting, but his voice faded as though he were backing away from the instrument.

"Will he hear me?" Akiva's voice asked in high Paffir. Receiving unheard assurance he continued in the language of prayer, "Clarek, I rejoice to greet you. We are wandering in power and confusion. Come lead us."

"Akiva, we don't need to take the city. We can overthrow the temple without fighting."

"We have done that already."

"Then--"

"But Tiyar must fight."

Listening to the noise in the background, Clark could believe he must. "How many are you?" he asked.

There was silence, then Tiyar said, "Six hundred twenty, not counting the children. They are many as well."

"How are you feeding yourselves?"

"The people feed us. Farmers relinquish the crop, and then when their stores are empty they join us."

"You pillage."

Again there was silence.

"Tiyar!" Greyesar called. "What's your answer?"

"I have learned too much to tell. You are so far away that I can barely hear you," Tiyar said. He signed off.

The ship came to Paffir Eket the next day. Clark tried to read the near-mass board as the neighbor planet drew slowly away above them, followed by one of its moons. Another body lay in the ship's path.

Huey came out of the tube into the control room, still trailing a mist of powder.

"What's that?" Clark asked, pointing to the mass.

"That's a moon," Huey said. He swung them sharply away from it, then back again and away again. "Someone is hiding behind it." He looked round at Greyesar. "Have a seat, enlightened one. Duty bids you remain. Clarkwell will participate, I'm sure?"

He led Clark to three targeting screens for the wide-angle resonance stimulators, explaining, "You are going to watch our tail and prevent any unwholesome bodies from surprising us in the night. Observe the screen."

Clark studied the drifting spots and blotches.

"Note that everything is moving. To obviate this difficulty, put it in track." The figures on the screen froze. "Now anything that moves in track is moving of its own accord, hm? Rather than seeming to move because we do. Hence a beast. And you must destroy it. Manual targeting, though inelegant, will suffice." A white circle appeared on the screen. "Line up the target, wait until it fills the circle, and strike. Thus." Huey intercepted an asteroid and blasted it. "Shoot in track if you like. When the picture blurs, push Impulse to update it." The figures jumped.

"Won't I waste a lot of time and ammunition on rocks?"

Huey chuckled. "Without a doubt."

"Hugh!" Greyesar called.

Clark felt the ship swerve. "It saw us," Huey said. "Courtesy impels a communication, I suppose." He picked up a receiver. "Distressed vessel? Do you require aid?...Who wants to know?...Certainly not...That is correct. This is not an Eyimalian vessel--this is--may I finish, please? This vessel is not subject to Eyimalian shipping codes...nevertheless, we are not subject...Listen, I don't want to land you folks in trouble with your superiors, but detouring around the entire Paffir system is out of the question. I have a valid transit authorization..." He rattled off the codes.

This evidently had some effect. Clark tapped in to the conversation on a spare line in case someone might say something in Paffir. He heard a clicking noise as people scurried to look up the code Huey had given and then a voice muttered in high Paffir, "So what? That's just the number they got from Nicky V."

Clark translated the remark in a note to Huey. Another memo writer, he thought as he handed it to the captain.

Huey put the com on hold long enough to hiss at Greyesar, "Ketry."

The two men stared at one another. Huey, facing away from Clark, must have worn the same slack-eyed expression as Greyesar. Collecting himself, the Eyimalian smiled at Clark and said, "Watch our tail. You'll probably have an opportunity for target practice."

Clark returned to the screens, still listening to the receiver. When he had identified the big marks for the neighbor planets and their moons, the sun's mass cluster and one for Paffir's own smaller moon, he found that he could watch for fast-moving things by seeing what jumped farthest on Impulse. He waited. An asteroid cluster was approaching from beyond the planets. When someone on the other ship made a comment in Paffir, he jumped and fired, but hit nothing.

"Look," Greyesar said.

The other ship had risen from behind the moon. It was as big as Huey's and well armed.

"Stand by. We will examine your vessel persuant to section four of the Eyimalian subject-planet code..." So the law hasn't been updated yet, out here, Clark thought.

The asteroids made a slow turn around the neighbor planet, decellerating steadily. They were not floating free. Clark targeted them and waited.

"Cease all firing. Cease all fire or we will blast you," the Ketry ship warned.

Huey clicked off the com to tell Clark, "Notify us before you shoot, please."

The cluster of spots on Clark's screen dispersed and reformed in a ring, one coming at the ship from each direction.

"Huey, we're being surrounded," Clark called. He targeted one of the ships below him. "I'm ready to fire."

The ship lurched as Huey accelerated past the moon and the vessel that had challenged them. A shot sent them spinning until Greyesar abandoned his station to set the ship straight. Now they were in the clear, but Clark saw ships following. He targeted the nearest while Huey tried to reach its captain.

"Keep back," Huey warned. "We will demolish you."

There was no reply. Clark fired and the other ship veered off its course. A second took its place. Clark fired and missed, then fired and hit. Huey steered them in a wild zig-zag altered now and then by Greyesar, who sat at the override and moved them out of the way as shots came.

Since any sharp turn blurred the screen in tracking mode, Clark stopped using it. He fired on anything that came in range, whether it moved or not. The targeting system compensated for sudden accelerations and turns, so he assumed he hit most of the things he aimed at, but did not bother studying the screen to find out. He had no idea how much damage he might be doing the persuers. When Huey's ship was hit, it swerved from its course and slowed until the captain or Greyesar recovered it. Then the status screens would begin to fill with location numbers, the critical damage points flashing until Huey rerouted the power flow away from the ship's wounds.

The targets seemed to multiply even as Clark fired on them. From eight attacking ships over twenty had blossomed, some small and some enormous, moving or drifting without any clear pattern except that most were coming at him. Clark no longer tried to align the targeting circle with anything, but shunted it back and forth across the screen like a shuttle and hit the trigger whenever the circle eclipsed anything. It became mechanical. A machine could do this, he thought. Yet he must concentrate. He must hit every spot on the screen, weaving his deadly fabric close, because each spot might be a ship coming toward him to kill. And each time he hit a target, was he killing them? He fired and paused to look in the impact-data eye. The target was an irregular little mass the size of a moon-to-planet craft. He saw the fine disrupting wave knife toward it and pass by. Missed. Pay attention, he thought. He went back to the screen. The attacking ships had drawn closer. He aligned the circle with the largest body on screen and fired twice.

Huey sucked in his breath. "Done," he said. "We have sustained an injury we cannot afford. Let's run for Paffir and bail out, Grey."

Clark's screen cleared. The ship had turned to face its enemies.

Greyesar steered them jerkily around the obstacles. "What's all this junk, Hugh?"

"Debris. They were dumping scrap to confuse our rear artillery."

Clark giggled involuntarily.

"Don't fire any more," Greyesar told him.

Clark stopped himself on the verge of asking why Huey had not told him the enemy ships were dumping scrap. It would have done him no good to know. He watched Huey jump them about as shock beams roared and crashed around the ship, timing his return shots so well that they met the advancing wave at its peak and the two blasts cancelled, the fingers of one hand smoothing his little mustache while those of the other danced on the toggles. The com headset lay beside him. Clark picked it up.

"They trace fond farewells," Huey warned.

"Let them." Clark punched in Maxwell's embassy number. No image appeared. He considered leaving a message, on the slim chance of rescue. Despair was fogging his vision. Why had Maxwell betrayed them all to the Ketries? They couldn't possibly pay as well as the Viyato, but the Viyato had murdered his daughter...Perhaps he had swung an alliance between the Ketry and those of the Uchide who didn't want Sevit found, but Malenyk Uchide stood most to gain by that and his jealousy was strongly tainted by love. Besides, it didn't matter. He would post a message, and Maxwell would laugh or save them as he pleased.

"Ketry bagged us," he commed, and then the message beam shattered as the ship collided with the atmosphere of Paffir Eket in a burst of flames. Huey pulled them out sideways.

The small fighter craft were waiting. They fell on the ship like carrion birds and attached themselves. The ship's frame shuddered. The near-mass readings went off scale as people crossed in front of the detectors. Feet hurried along floors above and below them. Fists pounded at the control-room door. The pounding subsided, the door opened and a voice from the tube commanded, "Come out one by one."

Huey said, "Greyesar, I'm afraid you saved me to no good purpose, but thank you."

"It was a good purpose," Greyesar answered.

"Come out," the voice repeated.

Clark went first, having no one to say goodbye to. If Teresa were still alive, she would give the information about Maxwell and the Viyato to the Daybreakers, and if not...if not, then not, as Berthe had said. The Viyato-Ketry-Var combination were probably done for anyway. Those families would be replaced, perhaps by another trio of priest, merchant and crook, but there would be a lull when order on Paffir Eket would be suspended and progress might creep in. He could die now.

As he crossed the room toward the door, Clark felt as though the whole ship tilted with his weight. Behind him Huey and Greyesar embraced. So that's what the notes were for, he thought. A note hung by the doorway and he grasped it on impulse, crumpling it into his sleeve. On the back was a tiny drawing of a tree. He stepped through the door. Something struck him in the neck and he knew nothing.

Chapter 21

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