On this visit, Dylan hoped to barter and bargain to save lives, ours and the Enochians, if they could only be brought to see where their self-interest lay. I was unneeded for negotiations; Beka and Dylan wore their most official-looking clothes and went off to the High City to speak to the Enochians. The rest of us prowled the promenade and market in the lower city; Rommie, Harper and Trance set off to look at clothing, and I ventured off alone, to see what I could learn.
Clothes were all well and good -- I had my eye on a new jacket that hung in a shop entrance -- but information was far more valuable.
The layered aromas that met my nose had not changed, though my tastes had matured to where I found the scent of turgon gyros appealing, and followed it to the booth where I tossed the owner a coin and was handed lunch. Turgon tastes sweet, after one gets used to the texture, which at first is reminiscent of a chunk of foamed insulation. I ate it as I strolled, viewing the wares offered for sale, and listening in every direction I could.
Nothing interesting came to me, only the usual buzz of people of many species conducting business. I paused under the awning of a weapons dealer to look more closely at a knife with an interesting curve to its blade. When the voices rose, to my right, I had the knife in my hand and was questioning the seller about the molecular structure of its materials.
"Now, wait a minute," Rommie said. She sounded annoyed.
"You get out of my way." This was a man's voice, with a slur that told me he'd had throat surgery at some time in the past, probably by means of a gauss rifle.
"She wasn't bothering you. You're bothering her," Rommie said again.
"Get away from me," Trance said, unease in her voice.
Unease from Trance? I could not ignore this.
"Hey, we can settle this peaceably. I'm sure there's a misunderstanding." It was Harper, coming to the rescue, unwilling to leave the situation to Rommie.
"You're the one who misunderstands," the man said again.
"Kludge. Get out of my way before I use you to wipe up her blood." A second man, unknown.
I dropped the price of the knife on the table, grabbed it and its sheath and made my way through the milling crowd to where two Nietzschians, Kazovs both, had cornered Trance and Rommie, with Harper edging in from the side. As I reached them, Rommie neatly swung one man's arm around behind him, easily dodging his forearm spines, and dislocated his shoulder. He howled in pain.
"Are you going to go away nicely, or do I have to get rough?" Her elbow threatened to dislocate his spine next if he gave the wrong answer.
Harper had pushed himself between the other man and Trance, who was starting to look more angry than afraid. I had never seen her truly angry before, and from the light in her eyes I was grateful not to be the object of her concentration.
The idiot ignored her, probably too high on flash or wire to care. As I came up behind him I saw the dataport on his neck: it was wire, then, probably hyped to the point that any further wire contact would fry his gray matter like an egg on a hot rock. I decided to help the cooking process along by slapping the flat of my new blade against the dataport.
He shrieked, released Trance to clutch at his neck with numbed hands, and dropped in his tracks.
"Idiot wirehead." I stepped over him. "Are you all right?"
"I am now," Trance said. "Thanks."
"Any idea what I should do with this one?" Rommie still had an armlock on the second idiot, who had finally realized that struggling only caused more pain to himself.
"Denali used to have decent security." I set a foot on the back of the unconscious wirehead, in case he should wake suddenly and decide to resume his activities. "Ah. Here they come."
A trio of A.I.s arrived, exclaimed over the insult to our persons, apologized for the inconvenience, commended us for preserving the peace and preventing any further incident, and carried the two idiots away, all within a minute.
"They're efficient, I'll say that for them," I murmured. "You notice they didn't ask you to give a statement."
"Total surveillance? Hmm." Harper glanced casually about the area. "Thanks for reminding me."
"This would not be a good place for you to practice certain skills, Harper, particularly when Dylan is in negotiations," Rommie said, as if Dylan's slightest word were as indisputable as natural law.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Let's go look at something interesting," Harper suggested.
Trance's eyes were bright again. "Thanks, Tyr." She put two fingers to her forehead in a mock salute.
"Yes -- what was that you did that dropped him?" Rommie's frown betrayed professional interest. "That would be handy to know."
I showed her the new knife. "It carries a small force field, as a result of the molecular structure. I used it to short out his brain through his dataport."
"Oww. Keep that away from me." Harper eyed the knife warily.
"It won't harm you as long as it's not near your port," I told him. He seemed shaky, perhaps a little too pale. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." He brushed me aside and followed Trance and Rommie. I watched him go, shook the doubts from my own mind, and went back to prowling the market.
When I checked in with Beka, a few hours later, she told me they were taking a short break. The Enochians had brought along several Shaperans, which had surprised Dylan. As traders for centuries, Shaperans had no homeworld to guard, but lived their lives aboard their cargo freighters. They appeared interested in the theory of a compact to fight Magog, but seemed inclined to quibble about the details far too much.
"How's it going with you?" she asked.
"No real problems. A couple of Kazov wireheads tried to harass for Trance and Rommie, but Security took them away."
"I'm sure they did. In how many pieces?"
"One each."
"Really." She whistled softly, impressed. "How'd you do that?"
"I picked up a field knife in the market. It works admirably on data ports."
"Show me when we get back to the ship? Better yet, tell me where the dealer is so I can buy my own?"
I could respect a woman who liked the right kind of knives. "It's the second booth past the leather shop with the lizard-hide jacket hanging in the door. You can't miss it."
"What, old Nerat is still there? I'll have to pay him a visit. Thanks, Tyr."
"How much longer will negotiations take, do you think?"
Beka sighed audibly. "If it were up to me, I'd tell them 'take it or leave it', but Dylan is much more polite. Too polite."
"Would you like me to hurry things along?" I leaned against a convenient wall, out of the direct view of the six cameras I'd seen, though there had to be a few more I hadn't found yet.
"Thanks, but no thanks. Dylan's got this silly idea that having live people to sign the compact makes a difference. Beka out."
Denali afforded those who were interested, and had the proper coin of exchange, an opportunity to obtain rare treasures, if one knew where to look, and listen -- not that I was planning to do anything to attract the attention of the androids, or their cameras. My plans were more private, and, I hoped, less predictable.
***
An outsider, looking at Nietzschian culture, might conclude that we were barbarians tamed by a powerful network of custom, ritual and forms. Another outsider, viewing the same culture from a different angle, might also conclude that we were a highly educated, highly civilized people who just happened to like to play with sharp objects and dangerous toys.
My personal view -- were it desired -- would be that both were incorrect because they ignored the most powerful incentive sustaining our lives: survival. Or, to put it another way, passion. Many Nietzschian children have been named after leaders and warriors from thousands of years ago, such as Arthur, Hector and Kliopatra, because their passions still inspired us, regardless of whether that passion was for a woman, a community or an idea.
I was unsurprised, as I traveled the galaxies, to find similar passions inspiring all truly vibrant cultures. What I had missed most, as I wandered, was the depth of commitment to ideas and passions that I had learned during my childhood. After nearly twenty years, I had found only one group of outsiders who shared that depth of passion and commitment -- those of us who lived aboard the Andromeda Ascendant.
Did that shared commitment make us a pride? No. But it did give me pause, whenever I thought of any action benefitting myself that might break the largely unspoken compact we had with one another. Perhaps our cooperation was the single great experiment that proved that Dylan's dream of restoring the Commonwealth was possible. Perhaps it was also his greatest folly, and mine. We had come close almost to blows more than once over the best course to take as a ship, as a group. He had condemned what he termed my 'extracurricular activities', and I had been angered by his insistence on negotiating with simpletons rather than bypassing them or dispensing with them completely.
It felt, at times, as if we were mirror images of one another, like Zoroaster's Ahuramazda and Ahriman. But which of us was 'good' and which was 'evil'? He had condemned a hundred thousand of my people to a fiery death; in terms of mass murder, that far outweighed any combination of events in my own history. I could still count the number of lives I'd taken. I doubted that he even knew the total of the deaths he'd caused any more.
Over time, I had come to rely on his judgment even when I mistrusted his reasons. I hoped that he would do the same for me, but I had no great reliance that it would happen. Even in the Dark Night, he was still an officer of the High Guard, and I was still the renegade mercenary whom he would not trust to understand a joke.
***
I found what I was looking for on a back street, in a tree-shaded alley where an old acquaintance ran a small kaffeshop. We sat at a table under his favorite tree, and exchanged information and money, and when I left I took with me a few bits of information I had not known, and a few trinkets with which to purchase more elsewhere, if I wished.
It was late afternoon, as Denali reckons time. I checked with Beka again and found that she and Dylan were staying at the Imperial Suites for the night, and that rooms had been booked for the rest of the crew as a diplomatic courtesy. I passed back through the market, which was starting to change over from daytime to evening custom, and purchased the clothing and personal goods I'd noticed earlier, then made my way to the Imperial and was shown to a suite of rooms on the third floor.
Hotel rooms are always under surveillance, I've found. Therefore, I was not surprised to see Harper lounging on a couch in the common area between bedrooms, tying an array of miniaturized cameras into a sort of posy by their antennae with a spare bit of wire.
"Isn't this pretty? The management left us a flower posy; I only had to put it together." Harper waved it in my general direction.
"Lovely. You got them all, I hope?" I cast a glance at likely locations in the room.
"Yep. Oh, I left a couple in place for the cleaning people, but I disabled them." He bounced to his feet. "So, where have you been all day? Did you find anything interesting?"
"I believe so." I took a data chip from an inside pocket and flipped it to him.
He caught it in one hand and turned it curiously. "What's this? Some kind of massive storage, that's for sure."
"You like movies, don't you?"
His face lit up. "Movies? You got me movies?"
"Take a look."
The chip held a small connection that could be plugged directly into his dataport. He plugged it in and blinked. "Wow. This is amazing. Really amazing. I've got this enormous file of movies that I can play on the back of my eyelids."
"I think you mentioned, at one time or another, that you'd missed a birthday or holiday. Is it the custom with your people to give presents on events like that?" I asked carefully. I had not felt entirely comfortable with him in words since I returned from the Jaguar ship, in spite of our air- clearing discussion.
"Yeah. Yeah, I did. They do, um, did." He unplugged it. "Thanks. I mean it. This is wonderful."
"I thought you might like to have something to look at without getting out of bed, when you can't sleep." I started toward a room and paused. "Which is mine?"
"You get your choice. I'm assuming that Beka will bunk with Trance, or with Dylan, in the rooms on that side. On this side, there are two rooms and there's just you and me." He raised an eyebrow. "You want to share, I've got no complaint."
"Would you care to share a little at the moment, or did you have plans for dinner?" I walked into the room with the larger windows and set my purchases on a chair. Yes, as I'd thought, the trees immediately outside would provide a relatively safe escape route to the labyrinth of the promenade, should one be necessary.
"If that's an invitation, I can get behind it. Or in front of it." Harper wandered in. "Actually, I found something for you, too. Give me a minute; I didn't want to leave it out in public." He disappeared into the adjoining room and came back with a small wrapped package, which he handed me. "It's not much, but I thought it was sort of in your line."
I turned the package over and took off the wrapping paper. At first I had thought it was an antique hardbound book, for it had that shape, but as I looked at it I realized that what had originally been a book of philosophy had been transformed into a complex monkey box, with hidden drawers and files. Yet it still worked as a book of philosophy. I noticed that the more intricate changes had been wrought starting at the page labeled "Self-Reliance" and could not help chuckling.
"It's interesting. Thank you."
"There's something in one of the pockets for you, too." He sat on the bed, waiting.
I played with the toy until I found the edge I sought, and out popped a small data disk. "What's this?"
Harper looked away from me, and back again. "I was thinking about how much you've lost. I mean, Earth is still there even if I can't live on it, but Fountainhead, where your family was from, was pretty much destroyed before you were born. So I dug into the All Systems University Library for anything I could find, and I came up with some pictures of the place the way it used to look. And there's some other stuff as well a couple of historical books I thought you might like. You don't have to look at it now."
"I'll wait until we're back at the ship," I promised him, knowing that he would understand how insecure the hotel-supplied data-reading system would be. "You're putting me in your debt again, you know."
"Nah, we're even. You gave me movies." His hand snaked around my waist, and I countered by tumbling backward onto the bed with him and sliding my fingers below the band on his trousers. "We could do worse things until the girls get here for supper."
"I'm not inviting them to share my appetizer," I growled, and licked my way down to my goal. We snacked on one another until Trance knocked at the door, and then went down to the hotel's restaurant for dinner.
***
Beka and Dylan were dining with the other ambassadors, hoping to make points casually over the meal that had not been made over the conference table. Rommie had gone on her own casual tour of the evening market, to report any useful information to Dylan on the spot. I wondered how well she was taking Dylan's liaison with Beka, considering her own apparent feelings for him. Dylan should have learned, both before and since his three-century jump, the folly of disregarding the emotions of A.I.s concerning those they worked with.
Dinner itself, while tasty, was uneventful but amusing. The Enochian restaurateur, who said he prided himself on providing for an eclectic palate, managed to supply even the most outre requests that Trance and Harper could devise. Only they would even consider eating the pulverized emulsion of a smelly underground seed along with sugared crushed purple fruit on bread and calling that a delicacy, or insisting on a table-sized hibachi so that they could roast small white sticky pillows and eat them with chocolate between crackers.. I was personally amazed the restaurant would even stock such an odd food, though Harper swore it had been highly regarded on Earth. I dined more conservatively on rabak steak, poached cholingam and roasted tfitfi, with irenie fruit for dessert. As for entertainment, I ignored the musicians provided by the restaurant, though they were capable. It was enough to watch Trance and Harper discovering odd food and discussing the things they'd bought or looked at.
The problem arose when we left. We had sat in a secluded area of the room, behind curtains, for the sake of privacy and courtesy, but on the way out we happened to leave at the same time as several parties from other tables, and in the crowd Harper slipped -- or was tripped -- and fell against me. I put out a hand to steady him, and from behind my shoulder came a man's voice saying, "This kludge bothering you, Kodiak?"
I turned quickly, putting myself between the man and my shipmates. "Far less than you, Kazov. What business is it of yours?"
"Oh, what you do always interests me, thief," the Kazov replied. I was unsure if he was Sauron Juarez or his brother, Telemachus, but it didn't matter; both were annoying beta males, always pushing for advantage without the nerve to follow through and actually take it.
"Thief?" I looked at him with surprise. "I've committed no crimes on this station, Juarez. You must be mistaking me for someone else." A quick glance aside showed me that Harper had put himself in front of Trance but was watching closely. "Perhaps you were seeking Napoleon Rastafarian?"
"Who?" Juarez had never had a quick mind. Charlemagne could easily have used him as an example of the degeneration of the Drago-Kazov without exaggerating.
"Napoleon Rastafarian. Oh, yeah. That's probably the guy you want." Harper jumped in.
"How would you know, boy?" Juarez sneered. "Who's Napoleon Rastafarian?" he asked his partner, who appeared as confused as he was menacing.
Trance opened her eyes wide. "Oh, Napoleon's very dangerous. He's a thief and a killer."
"What pride is he?" the other Kazov asked.
"Rugrat." Trance ran the syllables together so that it sounded like an exotic, dangerous growl. "Roogrratt. It's a cadet branch; you probably haven't heard of them."
"Oh, really?" Juarez asked. "And what would that boy or -- or whatever you are -- know about Nietzschians? Out of my way, boy," he ordered Harper.
Harper stood his ground. From the corner of my eye I saw him give Trance the signal to call Rommie. "I have as much right to be here in the promenade as you have," he said.
"You've got no right to be anywhere, kludge." He moved to push Harper aside, perhaps to get closer to Trance, whom he had been watching the whole time he insulted us.
I stepped in between them again. "That boy, as you called him, has fought by my side and survived the Magog, with more courage than I've ever seen from any of the Kazov. If you want to take him on, you're taking me on first."
"And me," Trance said. "Get out of our way."
Sauron Juarez growled and reached for a weapon, but Trance's tail whipped past Harper and snapped it out of his hand. Harper caught it in midair. "Hmm. What an interesting pistol. Isn't this one of those new Hyperion models that's proscribed on Denali? I'm afraid I'll have to turn this over to Security."
"Ah, just in time," I said, as the Security A.I.s arrived. "Would you be so kind as to take custody of this weapon? Our friend, here," I indicated Juarez, "found it lying nearby and was asking us if we knew whose it was."
"Of course. Thank you for keeping the peace," the A.I. said, pocketing the pistol. "You will receive a commendation from Security for your prompt obedience to our laws. We appreciate your conscientious commitment to public safety. Thank you."
"Don't think this is the end of us, Kodiak," the second Kazov said. "We're watching you."
I snorted. "Take it elsewhere. You're boring me." And, under the watchful eye of Security, I bowed to them courteously and followed Trance and Harper out of the room.
"I'm beginning to think you two shouldn't be let out alone," I told them. "That was a clever move, Trance, considering you both narrowly escaped death back there."
"From them?" Trance brushed the thought aside with a wave of her hand. "They weren't even smart enough to know who Napoleon Rastafarian was."
"They may be more bluster than brain, but that doesn't make them house pets."
"Where's Rommie?" Harper demanded in a undertone. "She should have been here."
"I don't know," Trance looked far more worried suddenly than she had been by the Kazov thugs.
I glanced over the heads of the crowd in the promenade. "She's down a level, and moving oddly."
Harper pushed past me to the railing and followed where I was pointing. "Something's wrong. Let's get there."
By the time we reached her, Rommie was sitting on a bench staring vaguely at the crowd. If she had been human, I would have said she'd been drugged. "What's wrong, Harper?" I asked.
He scanned her quickly. "It's as if someone has tried to dose her with wire. She's in bad shape. We've got to get her back to the ship."
"Dylan," I said into the communicator.
"Dylan here," came into my ear. "What is it, Tyr?"
"Rommie's behaving oddly. Harper wants to take her back to the ship."
"What's wrong?"
Harper answered, "Somebody tried to turn her into a wirehead. We're heading for the Maru."
"Right. I'll send Beka to meet you there. Dylan out."
Between them, Harper and Trance supported Rommie until we reached the Maru. Beka met us at the dock. "She doesn't look at all good. Where did this happen?"
"As far as we can tell, somewhere on the promenade between the Imperial and the market." Trance pushed a package aside; I was unsurprised to notice that Beka had brought all our purchases with her.
"No sense in going back for them," she said. "We're pretty much checked out."
"Good thinking." I went to Harper, who was kneeling next to the seated android. "What do you need?"
"This is bad. Get us back to the Andromeda, quick." Harper's voice shook.
The crowd had thinned enough that we could move quickly through the winding streets to the slip where the Maru waited. Toward the end of the trip Harper and I, between us, half-carried Rommie; Harper's mouth set in a thin, hard line as he saw her weaken.
"What's happening?" Beka demanded over her shoulder as she headed for the bridge.
"If she were human, she'd be going into a coma. Something's erasing her memory."
"Eureka Maru leaving Denali Station," Beka said into the communicator. "Please clear for liftoff."
"Liftoff cleared," an automated voice said. "Your commendations have been transmitted to you so that you may place them in suitable frames, should you desire to display them as souvenirs of your visit. Thank you for visiting Denali Station. Have a pleasant voyage, and do plan to return to visit again --"
Beka flipped the circuit off. "Shut up. What commendations?"
"Apparently, we were so law-abiding that the Security service has given us a commendation or two," I told her.
"Right. Tell me another one."
"It's true, Beka." Trance tried to assure her. "You know I wouldn't lie to you."
"I'll believe it when I see it." Beka muttered. "It'd be a first, for sure."
***
"What *is* wire?" Dylan leaned an arm on the table and stared at the readings on the pad Trance handed him. "I don't think I've ever heard of it before. Is it only on Denali?"
Harper shook his head, his fingers deep inside Rommie's skull. "That's right. They didn't have wire back when dinosaurs roamed the Internet. Wire's an electronic drug. Think of the hardest drug you can, from before, and raise it by a factor of ten."
"Make that a hundred," I added, "if you're thinking of the old opiates."
Dylan's frown would have curdled fresh mare's milk, had any been present. "Who did this? Why?" he snapped. "Harper, can you --"
"Two 'we don't know's' and one 'yes', but it will take time." Harper loosed his own frown toward Dylan. "And I work a lot better without everyone in the world hanging over my shoulder."
"I'm sorry." Dylan backed off. "I just don't like the timing." He turned to Trance. "I hear you had some trouble in the market this morning."
She nodded unhappily. "A couple of men tried to harass me. Rommie and Tyr stopped them. They were wireheads."
Dylan looked as if he were about to ask stupid questions again, so I decided to answer them first and save time. "They had dataports, like Harper's, but they had inserted vanadium wire into the hole; it vibrates on a frequency that gives them euphoria, almost unlimited endorphins, and a sense of absolute power."
"And you stopped them ... how?"
"Rommie armlocked the first one," Harper said from across the room. "Tyr shorted out the second guy with a force knife."
"Good work, both of you. I didn't know force knives were legal on Denali," Dylan commented.
I shifted my weight, annoyed at his line of questioning. "They probably aren't, but I bought it in the market there, so any illegalities aren't my problem."
"So I understand." Dylan spared me a quick, grateful smile. He started to pace in a small oblique shape resembling a circle but avoiding the area of the workshop where Harper labored over Rommie. "This will give me some interesting leverage in the negotiations with the Enochians."
"How was that going?" Beka walked in, her arms crossed, looking worried. "As I recall, the Shaperans were enjoying being picky."
"About the same. But the Enochians were playing their 'more-knowledgeable-than-thou' card. I doubt they knew about this little matter, though, or arranged it. I think I can persuade them that if they know so little about what's happening on their own station, they certainly won't be able to prevent the Magog from finding them before they know it." His jaw set hard. "I don't like to use this kind of thing, but I will if I need to."
He was thinking strategically again. Good. I glanced at Harper, but received in return a small head shake; there was nothing I could do to assist.
"Tyr, Beka, walk with me. I want to hear your assessment of what occurred down there."
I rendered them a detailed account of the two encounters, leaving out my activities between those events. Let them assume I shopped only for clothing and for Harper's movie chip, should he choose to mention it to anyone. In any case, I doubted that my other purchases had anything to do with what had happened.
"What about the second pair of Nietzschians?" Beka asked. "Were they just being assholes, or did they have a purpose? Don't look at me like that, Dylan, I'm not at a negotiating table now. I'm aboard ship and I can say what I want."
"As far as I know, they were just looking for trouble," I said. "The Juarez brothers are from a Kazov sub-pride that never accepted the Drago-Kazov alliance; they're probably so out of touch they haven't heard about the Sabra-Jaguar alliance, either. They knew who I was, but since I'm the only Kodiak left that's not surprising."
"I see," Dylan said. "Then you don't think there's a connection between the Juarez brothers and what happened to Rommie?"
"Truthfully, Captain, I doubt they're intelligent enough to even have considered it."
"If we leave them out, what's left? The wireheads?. Where are they now?" Dylan turned toward the shimmer of Andromeda's avatar that had materialized in the hall. "Andromeda, please check on the whereabouts of the men who tried to attack Trance this morning on the station."
"They're still being held by Security on misdemeanor charges of harassing tourists," Andromeda said. "Captain, Harper is asking for you in the workshop."
"On my way."
Beka and I turned in unison to follow Dylan, who had lengthened his stride.
"I can't speak for the others, sir, " I said formally, "but for myself, I can assure you that I broke no laws of Denali Station while I was there."
"You know, Tyr, that's a very comforting thing to hear from you," Dylan tossed over his shoulder. "I don't even want to know what laws of other jurisdictions you ignored."
I shrugged. I seemed to do a lot of that around him, on occasion. It deflected criticism by making me seem to take whatever he said with several grains of salt, while still maintaining sufficient interest in the conversation to avoid the semblance of rudeness.
"Dylan, the three of them received two commendations for law-abiding behavior from Station Security; doesn't that even count with you?" Beka inquired.
"I'll have the certificates framed and post them in the conference room," he retorted, "to show what's possible when you all put your minds to it."
"Ouch." Beka raised her hands in a gesture that on Antares Six would have meant she was disavowing relationship with Dylan and claiming all of his property as hers in the settlement. "See what happens when we don't follow our natural inclinations and obey the stupid laws? We still get insults from our fearless leader."
"Shameful," I agreed with her.
When we reached the workshop Rommie was sitting upright, a distinct improvement, and looking around the room as Harper continued to work in the back of her skull. "Dylan! I had something I was supposed to tell you, but I can't remember what it was."
"That's all right, Rommie. How's she doing, Harper?"
"Way, way better. I did a complete wash on the damaged parts and uploaded everything from the ship again, and I should be done in a few minutes." Harper looked unhappy. "However, she's got a short-term memory loss and I'm not sure I can fix that." He dropped a splinter of metal on the floor. "And I pulled this disruptor chip out of her hair. It was activated remotely; that's what launched the virus. It probably got there during the fight with the wirehead."
"Let me know if there's anything I can do," Dylan told him. "Rommie, you rest. When you remember what it is, let me know, but don't worry about it."
"Are you going back down there?" she asked him, worried.
"Not until tomorrow. I told them I needed time to examine the information they sent me for review; I can do that here as well as there." Dylan turned to Trance, who had stayed to hold Rommie's hand. "Would you come to the bridge with Beka and me and tell us what you saw?"
"Sure. Can you manage without me?" she asked Rommie.
"I'll be all right. I really appreciate you staying."
"It's no problem. You took care of me this morning."
"I wish I remembered that."
"Tyr, hang around a bit, would you?" Harper's mouth was set in an unhappy line. "I'd like to talk to you when I get done."
I pulled up a stool and sat down. "Would it help you if I told you what I saw this morning?"
"It might," Rommie said. "I remember walking into the market with Trance. She wanted to look for a new outfit in case we had any more formal diplomatic receptions."
"That's good," Harper put in. "Keep going."
Rommie closed her eyes, her hands palm down on her thighs. "I walked with her to the first shop she wanted to look at, but it didn't have the right color, so Harper pointed out another one on the other side of the street. We were almost there when I thought I saw ..." She put a hand to her forehead. "I know this sounds stupid, but there was a booth full of fur rugs, all sorts of fur rugs, and I thought I saw one of them move."
"Perhaps some animal the shop owner kept as a pet?" I asked, hoping she was wrong.
Androids are never wrong about what they observe, any more than surveillance cameras.
"It was reddish brown, shaggy, and it had claws ... no. No. No!" She screamed. The sound, full of fear and rage, seemed to rebound the walls and launch back at us, seeking a target.
Harper touched something in the back of her head so that she stopped, all the while patting her on the shoulder. "You're safe. It's all right."
"Of course I'm safe. I'm aboard myself. ... you know what I mean." She glared at me, but I knew I was only the substitute for what she really wanted to loose her anger at. "It was a Magog -- in disguise, some kind of odd armor or headgear, but you can't disguise the claws or the fur. After seeing Rev Bem for months, I could hardly be mistaken."
"Where was I?" Harper asked her. "Where was I when you saw it?"
"Next to Trance, almost in the booth. I don't think you had even seen the other shop." She turned back to me. "It was across the street from the one with the strange reptile coat in the doorway."
I punched my fist into my other hand. "I knew I should have gone back to check out that coat."
"You saw the Magog too?"
"Unfortunately, no. However, I've had dealings with that leather-shop owner before, and I would have no problem persuading him to inform me of anything I wanted to know. It would, of course, have required me to break a few of Denali's laws."
"Oh, gee, you'd give up your good-conduct medal and certificates," said Harper. "Andromeda, get Dylan and Beka and Trance back down here, right now. And Tyr, I guess we get to talk later."
***
"The question, of course," Dylan said an hour later, after Harper had all but sedated Rommie, who had been as near to hysterics as any human, "is who is working with the Magog there, besides the wireheads. It's plain to me that they were sent to intercept you."
"They didn't expect Rommie to fight them," Trance said. "They figured I'd be an easy target, and maybe they even figured they'd get her in enough trouble for Security to take her away too." She shivered. "You don't want to be in the Security lock-up on Denali. I've seen it, and it's not very pretty."
Something about Trance's reply bothered me, but I had other things to attend to before I could think about that.
"And they didn't expect you, either." Dylan cocked his head at me. "You didn't see it, did you?"
"If I had, captain, there'd be a dead fur rug in that booth." I could barely contain my frustration at having let a Magog escape from so near. "What puzzles me, though, is how one could be there at all and not rampage through the market on a killing spree."
"That's an excellent question. Beka, there's not a chance it was Rev Bem, is there?"
Beka shook her head decisively. "He should still be at the Wayist gathering. I had a message, voice only, from him just before we arrived, and he said he'd been asked to stay on for a while and had accepted. Besides, he'd hardly have shown himself at an open market in a region that has suffered from Magog attacks for the past fifty years."
"And we know that gathering of his is nowhere near Denali. You're pretty close to him, Beka. Have you ever heard Rev say anything about any other peaceable Magog?"
"Other than the founder of Wayism, no. Never. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've heard him mourn the fact that he was the only Wayist follower."
"I don't know about this," Harper said hesitantly, "but is there any chance that the Magog god would *make* one of them behave differently, to sucker someone into thinking that everything we say is just fake?"
"That's a really scary thought," Trance said, her skin fading to lavender.
"Who would they be dealing with? The Enochians? The Shaperans? Not the Kazov, certainly?"
"The Kazov are stupid and careless, but not stupid enough to align themselves with Magog," I said, "unless they're being played for fools by a third party -- which is certainly possible."
"I don't like this at all." Harsh lines settled into Dylan's face. I realized, seeing them, that he looked as if he had aged a goodly part of the three hundred years he'd been in the black hole, just in the last hour.
"Did you approach the Enochians or did they call you?" Beka said suddenly. "Is it a trap, or are they being played for fools as well?"
"The only way I'm going to find out if it's a trap is to spring it," Dylan said. He turned to me. "Tyr, I want you to come back to the station with me, with whatever weapons will not violate the Denali market treaties. I'm going back to negotiations tomorrow, but tonight I'd like to do a little hunting. Care to join me?"
"With pleasure," I told him, and meant it.
***
It was relatively easy, once we were near the station in the Maru, to park off to the side of a remote landing slip and walk in. We appeared to be just another pair of rough characters, perhaps miners from Atholi or dock hands working on a freighter; nobody noticed us. We, on the other hand, noticed everything.
Dylan waved me off to the back of the booths as he went around the front, staying to the shadows. I half-drew the force knife and kept it ready. If I ran across those wireheads again, they would spend their extremely brief future talking to me. The shadows behind the canvas booths and rough-built shops seemed to cling to the bottoms of walls and curve around the corners.
Nothing moved around us. I reached the corner behind the booth where Rommie had seen the Magog, and crouched to check the ground. No odd tracks, nothing different here than anywhere else -- except for a small clump of reddish-brown hair that had stuck to a splintered post. I picked it up, and sniffed at it, and all but gagged.
Magog. No mistake. After the worldship, I would never mistake that odor again.
Rommie had been right.
I whistled, soft and long, like one of the local night snakes -- Denali Station residents ate almost anything, but the local reptiles had poisonous meat, so they were the preferred pets and rat- catchers -- and heard an answering whistle from two booths up. As I glided toward it, staying near the shadows, something about the shape of the shadow along the edge of a tent flap made me flinch away cautiously, just in time to avoid the flick of the claws aimed at me.
They'd moved too slowly; I severed the arm with one slash of my knife. When it fell, bloodless, dangling from a wire, I knew it had been a set-up. I ducked back from the booth and took off in search of Dylan.
He was gone.
No blood on the ground, nor signs of a scuffle. Either they had taken him by surprise -- not an easy task -- or he had seen the trap and sprung it, and had moved out of its way, waiting for me.
But there were no bodies of others, either, or signs of any being hastily hidden.
I moved into shadow and became still, listening, and at last heard the small sounds of movement on the next street. As I arrived, Dylan was dispatching the second of four assailants in as pretty and vicious a knife fight as I'd ever seen. I took care of the other two for him and went to him, but could not get his attention. I waved a hand and he whirled, blade at the ready, and relaxed only when he saw me.
He was deaf, and mute. Both his ears and mouth had been covered by hastily-slapped-on synthskin, which bonds immediately to any living flesh. The synthskin had just missed his nose; he was fortunate to be alive at all.
Synthskin was created to bond instantly to the body to
heal wounds; I could do nothing for him. We returned to the Maru and then
to the Andromeda, where he went straight to the med deck and remained there.
It would not do for the Commonwealth's chief representative to be unable
to negotiate in the morning.