DANGEROUS GAMES by Marta Randall

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HIS DAILY BILLING WAS WAITING FOR HIM when he returned to his cabin. He paid it, cursing, and yawned. The effects of the second wake-up had worn off, and his muscles felt slack and heavy. Except for his two-hour nap the day before, he’d been without sleep for three standard days. He sat on the bunk and rubbed his eyes, and, seeking nothing more than a moment’s rest, he lay back and slept for ten hours. He woke refreshed and hungry, and it seemed that the problems he’d taken with him to sleep has smoothed themselves. Feeling that, with some deplorably linear thinking, he could easily clear up any and all misunderstandings, he showered, dressed, and made his way to Tammas’ Hopyard. Save for Tammas and a small woman in an odd green spacer’s suit, the place was empty. Jes entered and sat at the bar, and Tammas came over to scowl and flap his traditional cleaning rag on the counter. “Tatha said you serve food,” Jes said. “I could use some.” “Stew,” Tammas muttered, glaring. “Fine. Do you have any juice?” Tammas’ brows nearly met and he straightened his shoulders. “I run a saloon, Menet. Not a bloody nursery.” “A beer then,” Jes said, resigned. Tammas nodded, still scowling, and disappeared through a door behind the bar. Jes saw the small woman looking at him. “Well, you’re obviously not a Genny,” she said amiably. “Your accent is thick as curds.” “And you’re not one either,” he replied. “My ship blew a leads plate in tau and I had to come in for repairs.” She hooted. “You sure picked the wrong place to look for help. Are you getting any?” “After a fashion. They sent me to some crazy Theresan.” “Tatha? I’ve heard about her.” The woman stuck out her hand. “Name’s Min Calder, bumpcaptain from East Lab.” “Jes Kennerin.” Jes shook her hand. “You’re here on business?” “Such as it is. We had to make a run in and I pulled the short straw. Gensco makes me twitchy.” Jes rolled his eyes in agreement. Tammas came backwards through the door, turned, and put a bowl on the counter before Jes. Steam rose from hunks of meat and vegetables. Tammas provided spoon, beer, and bread. Jes ate. “You going to be here long?” Min said. He shrugged and swallowed. “As long as it takes to fix my sloop. For all I know, that may take forever.” “Me, I’m stuck here for another two, three days. The idiots don’t have the return cargo ready. So here I am with nothing to do but hang around Tammas’, and I’m getting pretty tired of watching beer drinkers.” Jes paused with a spoonful of stew halfway to his mouth. It was as obvious an effort to pick him up as any he’d encountered. He glanced at her obliquely. Trim, tiny woman, brown hair, brown eyes, laugh-lines grooved about the mouth. She smiled back at him and turned to call an order to Tammas, letting Jes take his time. She’s a Labber, Jes thought. Labbers have no love for Gensco - one could easily be spying for Parallax. He shook his head, annoyed. Gensco had no love for the Lab, either, and would be doubly suspicious of any Labbers come aboard. Getting as bad as Tatha, he told himself. When Min finished placing her order, Jes smiled at her. “What’s to do on Gensco Station, aside from drinking beer?” “I think we could manage to come up with something.” “Something,” with Min, became spending the rest of the day wandering through the public areas of Repairs Bay Colony, peering in the shops and gossiping about the inhabitants. Min had a quick, sharp tongue and used it lavishly; her gripes about Gensco were all solid, realistic, and devoid of plots, counterplots, and subtle intricacies. Jes found it refreshing, and during the course of the afternoon he learned quite a lot about Gensco, from an enemy’s point of view. “Of course they’re bloody-minded bastards,” Min said at one point. They were leaning over the railing of an overpass, watching the movement of cargo cubes through a transparent supply line. “You know that one of the first things they attack in The Lab are the children’s worlds? They try to capture them, to raise our kids as stinking Gennys, and if they can’t capture, they kill. We’ve had to move the worlds time and again, lying about where they are - we’ll get as bad as they are, eventually. You got any kids?” Jes shook his head. “Nieces and nephews until hell won’t have it, but none of my own.” “Me neither. I’ve been thinking of it, though. It’d be nice to have a kid around the hole, keep me from getting lonely. My lover’s got a kid - I kind of envy her, having someone brand new to bring up. You know what the Genny bastards do with theirs?’ “What?” “Freeze them. You come to work on Gensco and you’ve got kids, they take them somewhere and put them on hold until you can get them out of hock again.” “Mother! Wouldn’t it be simpler to control births? Or to abort?” Min looked at him. “Come on, tauCaptain, you can do better than that. Gensco’s got two aims.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Keep the population steady and, second, keep the population quiet. They rotate workers for five-year terms, and if they have kids, they take them. Behave yourself, you get your kids back. Don’t behave yourself, and . . .” She gestured. “Is it any wonder every Genny’s a bloodpicker? If your own folk can do that to you, you’ve got to believe that outsiders will be even worse.” “Sweet Mother.” Jes looked at her with amazement. “It’s the truth. You know how they keep outsystem workers here?” “Yeah. Take something they need and don’t give it back.” “There was an old fellow here once, they took away his spare lung. Real effective. Or they take any money you’ve got, and the wages they pay all go toward keeping you alive here. Room, board, rental space in the yards - hell, they even regulate the air, call it a sanitation tax. You can’t pay your way off, and you can’t save enough to get off, and you can’t get your hands on anything you brought with you. Outsystem workers aren’t rotated - it’s a life sentence. And they claim that we’re barbarians.” “Then why deal with them at all?” “We have to. They want our ores, and they’ve closed all our other markets. We have to sell to Gensco, at Gensco’s prices. But they want us offed, too. We’re anarchistic, we don’t come prepackaged and we don’t fit into boxes. And that offends them.” Min looked up at Jes and shook her head. “You want my advice, Kennerin, you’ll raise hell until your ship’s fixed, and you’ll lam it out of Priory as fast as you can. Whoever you are and whatever you want and wherever you’re from, you sure as hell don’t need this.” Jes silently agreed. The light had paled to evening. They left the bridge and bounced from one entertainment hall to another, playing the games, gambling, watching the shows. Min kept her voice low, touching Jes’ arm whenever he spoke too loudly. He didn’t understand why until, backed against the bar in a crowded cabaret, someone jostled his elbow, sending his drink flying out of his hand to drench the Genny on his other side. The Genny spun around, glowering. “I’m sorry,” Jes said. “Someone hit my arm. Here, let me help you clean up.” The Genny tensed his shoulders and glared at Jes. “Hey, folks, we’ve got us a pigeon,” he said. “You keep your pigeon hands off me. I’ve heard that story before.” “It was an accident,” Jes repeated. “I said I’m sorry.” Min tugged his arm. The crowd had moved back, leaving a small clearing around them. “Not only am I wet,” the Genny said, “not only is my evening fucked, but I’m probably covered with alcoholic pigeon germs.” The people laughed. Jes shook Min away and clenched his hands. “Back where I come from, we teach people to be polite to strangers. Some folk need to have the lesson beat into them.” The Genny obligingly raised his fists. Min glanced at the doorway and yelled, “Pols!” The Genny disappeared into the crowd, which just as quickly went back to drinking and conversations. Jes stood alone, bewildered, his fists raised before him. Min grabbed his arm and pushed him to the door. There were no pols in sight. “You idiot,” she said, when they were on the street again. Jes looked at her with surprise. She was shaking. “Haven’t you been in a barroom fight before?” he said. “That’s not the point. You know how the Gennys hate us. One barroom fight could spread until every Labber on the Station is dead. And it wouldn’t stop there.” “Oh, come on. A fight between a Genny and an out-worlder?” “And me, Kennerin.” She took a deep breath. “We’ve barely recovered from the last battle - if they chose to come at us now, we’re lost. That last bout was started by a Labber who accused a Genny of cheating on a cargo load. And got strung up for it.” Min paused, “We lost four hundred people in ten days, including a whole lot of my family. I like you, Kennerin, but I swear to God, do that again and I’ll kill you myself.” She was still shaking. Jes put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Min. The more I learn about this Sector - “ “The happier you’ll be to be off it. You won’t be the only one. Someone bumped you deliberately.” Jes stared at her. She nodded. “I don’t know why and I don’t know who. I was standing next to you and someone stuck a hand between us and hit your elbow. Next thing, you were getting ready to be creamed. You’re dangerous company, Kennerin.” Jes slid his arm around her shoulders and resisted the impulse to shiver. By the time they reached Tammas’, her ebullience reasserted itself, and Jes began to think he had imagined the entire thing. They ate, drank, talked, laughed, and, entering Min’s cabin at the end of the evening, took an amiable, easy pleasure of each other. When he woke, Min was gone. A note, propped on fee table, said that she’d left to cope with cargo handlers and she’d be at Tammas’ later in the day. Jes tossed the note in the disposer, showered, and returned to his own cabin through the purposeful bustle of the morning. He kept his head well down and didn’t speak. Reaching his own cabin without incident, he let the muscles of his chest relax and opened the door to chaos. The room had been thoroughly ransacked: bedding ripped apart, the contents of his sack scattered on the floor, the clothes niche flung open, the empty drawers of the desk upside down amid the wreckage on the floor. Jes snapped the door closed behind him and stared at the mess in shock. He ran to the clensor unit and reached for the light panel. The clips were angled as he’d left them, and the Certificate, untouched, rested in its hiding place. He reset the clips and quickly repaired the damage to the room. Nothing had been taken and nothing, save his own peace of mind, had been destroyed. Not Tatha, he thought as he worked. She’d have made a far neater job of it, for one. And she couldn’t have been the one who jostled him the night before, not a Theresan in a crowd of xenophobic Gennys. He finished cleaning up, wolfed down the unpleasant breakfast provided by the chute, and headed for Tatha’s repairs bay. His sloop remained suspended overhead, but the lights around it were dark. He swarmed up the rope, switched on his pocket light, and swore as he looked at the damaged area. Tatha had left it exactly as it had been the day before: new wires scattered around the gap, a few wires half connected, a couple of tools lying on the metal hull. Jes let himself get furious. He slid down the rope, slammed out of the bay, and, reaching his room, demanded of the commiter that it connect him with Maigret. Instead he found himself shunted from one bureaucrat to another, each of whom listened to his complaint with distaste and passed him along the line until he found himself faced with the person who had originally taken his call. And: “I’m sorry,” he was told. “We’re far too busy to deal with this. You’ve been assigned a jockey and we’ve no time to disrupt the entire work schedule of the Station because you can’t get along with her. You’re being done a favor, Menet Kennerin. Please remember that.” Jes cursed at length in Standard and in Kasiri, with all the righteous indignation of a reasonable being faced with irrational nonsense. Then he sat at the desk and did some heavy-duty thinking. He couldn’t take his sloop out until she’d been repaired. He could resolder the leads wires himself, but could not obtain a leads plate without Tatha’s help. Tatha, though, had made it quite clear that she would not help him unless he helped her. With what? Jes shook his head and left the question for later. Think elliptically, he told himself. Suppose that there was a Parallax agent on Gensco, that the agent had followed them in Gem Sphere, that the agent had overheard Maigret’s suspicions about Jes. The agent would have followed Jes to find out who, in fact, he was. And would attempt to divert Gensco’s suspicions on to Jes, thereby taking the pressure off himself. In which case the ransacking of Jes’ cabin would have happened before the incident in the entertainment hall. Further: the agent probably knew nothing about Aerie-Kennerin. If Parallax ran a search on the report, Jes Kennerin’s name would set off bells, but the agent wasn’t likely to beam a report, and thereby jeopardize cover, before the mission was completed. And Parallax was not likely to blow its plans by making any special effort to capture Jes while Gensco remained free. He could protect himself, he decided, by keeping his head down and his temper in check, by staying out of trouble, and by making sure that Tatha fixed his ship as soon as possible. And if that meant playing her game, or pretending to, it was a price he’d be prepared to pay for his freedom. He returned to the repair bay and, picking up Tatha’s laserpencil, began soldering the leads himself. He finished the work, put down the pencil, and rubbed his eyes. The next stage needed a larger laser, but he didn’t know where Tatha kept her tools. He left the tools he’d used stacked neatly at the rope’s end and, after cleaning up, when to Tammas’ Hopyard and ordered a beer. Tatha was not there, and Tammas said he hadn’t seen her since breakfast that morning. But Min came in a few minutes later and detailed the day’s mishaps with Gensco Cargo. Jes leaned back in his chair until he had a clear view of the doorway. The bar filled during the course of the evening; the air grew dim and stale. Tammas, catching his eye, shrugged and brought more beer. “If she comes in,” Jes said to him, “will you tell her that I was looking for her? And would you tell her - ?” “That you’re sorry? She said you’d say that. I’ll tell her.” Jes glared at Tammas’ retreating back, then turned to answer the question in Min’s expression. “Tatha’s disappeared,” he said. “I think she thinks I insulted her, and I want to apologize so she’ll finish work on my ship.” Min raised her eyebrows. “She doesn’t sound like the type to get huffy over an insult.” “Oh, fuck her,” Jes said. “You want to leave?” Min nodded and pushed her beer away. “For you, any time.” THEY WERE ASLEEP, PRESSED TOGETHER IN Jes’ narrow bed, when Jes woke to the sound of the door closing. He reached for the light switch beside the bed. “It’s okay,” Tatha’s voice whispered. She sounded tired. “It’s me, don’t panic. Turn it on low.” “I’m not alone,” Jes whispered back. “I know.” There was a soft rustling; Tatha crossing the room to sit, Jes presumed, on the edge of the table. “Tammas said you were looking for me.” “Surely you expected that.” When Tatha did not reply, he said, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. All I want is my ship fixed so I can get the hell out of here.” “A consummation devoutly to be wished,” Tatha said. “I know who’s with you, and I know she’s not asleep. Turn on the light, Jes. I need help.” “Min?” “Go on,” Min said. “I’m awash with curiosity.” Jes sat and pressed the switch. A faint glow filled the cabin. Tatha was indeed perched on the edge of the table. “More,” she said. Jes turned the light higher, gasped, and jumped from the bed. Tatha’s brown suit was in tatters, her hair crusted with dirt, and one hand held her shoulder tightly. Between her fingers, blood welled slowly to trickle down the fur of her bare arm. Her eyes were heavy with pain and exhaustion. Min rolled from the bed, crossed to Tatha, and pulled her hand away from her shoulder. A dirty wound showed beneath the blood-soaked fur. “What else?” Min demanded. “Bumps and bruises, but this is the worst.” Tatha put her hand over the wound again and grimaced sharply. “You’d better leave.” “But you need help - “ “Kennerin has surgeon’s citations. You don’t want to get involved - you’ve yourself and The Lab to protect.” Min reached for her clothing. “Is it that bad?” “I don’t know. It may be. You don’t want to know about it.” Min bit her lip, nodded, and dressed. She paused at the door, fumbled in her belt pouch, and tossed something to Jes. “This might help,” she said. “You won’t want to order supplies.” She slid through the door and closed it behind her. Jes looked from the emergency medical packet in his hand to Tatha. “Do you want a full-scale explanation now or later?” she said. “Sweet Mother,” Jes said, exasperated. “Lie on the bed.” Tatha slid from the table and swayed. Jes caught her and carried her to the bed, stripped the jumpsuit from her, and threw it in the disposer. He began cleaning the area of the wound with water. Tatha clenched her teeth. The incision was not deep, but it was wide and long and filthy. He stared at it, tapping his lip with his finger. “It needs stitching,” he said. “We’ll have to find a doctor.” “We can’t. You’ve enough citations, you can handle this.” “God, Tatha. I don’t have any anesthetic - “ “If you call a medic, they’ll kill me. I swear it, Jes.” She grinned pallidly. “It’s up to you, brave one. I may faint, but I trust that you won’t.” Jes frowned. He’d done his share of stitching before, but never on an unanesthetized patient. Tatha looked at him, dirty gray face, tangled silver hair, her bloodshot eyes expectant. Jes took a deep breath, nodded, and opened the kit. She fainted when he began cleaning the wound. He worked faster, trying to get most of it done before she woke. When the needle entered her skin she moaned and stirred, and he bound her to the bed, placed his fingers briefly on her throat and determined that her pulse was steady, and continued stitching. Finished, he looked critically at the job, decided that it would hold, and layered strips of protective absorbent and clingtape over the wound. Finally he checked her pulse again, peeled back her lids to look at her eyes, released her bindings, and bound her arm tightly to her waist. He covered her with a blanket and sat back in the cabin’s one chair. After a while, unexpectedly, he slept. He woke a few hours later, muscles stiff, and went to the bed. Tatha lay still, breathing evenly. He checked her pulse again, relying, as before, on its steadiness and not on its speed. He had no idea what the normal pulse rate of a Theresan was, nor of normal temperature. She showed no signs of waking. He pulled on his suit and went to the repairs bay, where he shimmied up the rope and into his ship. He removed a range of antibiotics and analgesics from the medical supply rack and put them in his pocket, added an extra roll of absorbent and tape, and slid down the rope again. Tatha was awake when he returned. “I don’t know which antibiotics you can take,” he said, emptying his pockets. “Or painkillers. So I brought a range of them. I cleaned the wound as well as I could, but without a diagnostat - the stuff’s from my sloop.” “I thought so. You’re stubborn, but you’re not stupid.” She tried to sit up, and Jes came to help her. “I’m filthy,” she said with distaste. “I’ll give you a bath.” “I’m not paralyzed, Kennerin. I can clean myself.” Jes helped her to the clensor. While she bathed he stripped the dirty sheets from the bed, dumped them, and ordered a new set. He collected stray bits of matted for and pushed them in the disposer, brushed his hands, and remade the bed. Tatha came dripping from the unit. “I can’t dry myself,” she said ruefully. Jes accepted the towel and passed it over her soft fur, and when she gave him the name of an antibiotic he picked it from the litter of drugs on the table and gave it to her. She refused a painkiller. “You’re being remarkably silent,” she said, once back in bed. “Aren’t you anxious to yell questions?” “I’m not sure I want to know the answers,” Jes said. “But I guess you’d better tell me what this is all about.” “Water?” Jes brought her a cup, then sat at the table. Tatha stared into the cup. “Santa Theresa,” she said finally. “My name is Tatha Al’Okelough preParian, which doesn’t mean a thing to you. I’m Tatha, the second child of the clan Okelough, of the province of Parian. Parian’s the fiefdom of clan Okelough, my parents rule it. It’s a productive province, wealthy, influential. It bored me. I left fairly young to work as a jockey at the local Sal. It was the only job they’d let me have, family or no. And when I found, after a couple of years, that they’d no intention of letting me move up to taujockey and ride the ships, I went home. My clan took me back. I suppose they were used to me, by then. They sent me off to Egliesa, the capital, to university. That bored me too, and I spiced things up. Extracurricular activities. Tempus est jocondum. The last prank went sour, my lover died, I became very unwelcome on Santa Theresa. My father gave me what little money he could and some jewelry that was to come to me anyway. And he told me to get off Santa Theresa and not come back.” She paused to sip water. “I had something of my own by then, too. The money was enough to buy passage to Priory, the only jobs were on the Station, and when I came here they took what my father had given me, and what I had myself, and I can’t leave until I get it back.” She stopped, drank some water, and sat staring into the cup. Her eyes were downcast and Jes could not read her expression. “Go on,” he said. She went on without looking up. She had deduced that Maigret knew the location of the confiscated goods, and Tatha had set herself, over the past months, to follow Maigret, trying to learn where the hiding place might be. When she learned that Parallax too was interested, her search quickened, became a complex game of following the Parallax agent while trying not to be followed herself, for if Parallax learned the location and captured it, Tatha would lose all chance of regaining that which was hers. Last night, in the cool fastness of Maigret’s deserted office, Tatha had learned the location of her possessions. The Parallax agent had found her there and tried to kill her. “He had the benefit of surprise, and I think he damaged me more than I damaged him,” she said with regret. “A sorry blow to the ego. And I came here.” “And now that I’ve patched you up, you can march off and rescue your jewels,” Jes said curtly. Tatha shook her head. “I know where they are, but not where that is.” Jes stood, kicking the chair aside, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Doesn’t it strike you that all this is a lot of trouble for a bunch of jewelry? You can leave with me, I’ll take you. And you can make up your loss. It’s not as important as your freedom, is it?” “I think it is.” Jes cursed. Tatha sipped from the cup. “I assume you tried to get another jockey,” she said when he was done. “And I assume they told you to be happy with what you had.” Jes stood at the edge of the bed and glared at her. “I don’t like being bullied and I don’t like being coerced.” “Then how about moral blackmail?” she replied. “Our shadow is a Parallax agent and what I know, he knows. If he finds the location of the place before I do, or before Gensco is warned, he’ll have the leverage he needs for the takeover.” “I don’t care. Gensco and Parallax deserve each other. All I want is to get the hell out of here, and soon.” Tatha didn’t look up. “The hiding place is in the cold creche. And we’ve found out what the cold creche is.” Jes put his hand on the table. By all the criteria he and Tatha had discussed that day in the repairs bay, the cold creche was the perfect lever. “Not fair,” he said. “Oh, that’s totally dirty, Tatha. I’m not responsible for those children.” Tatha didn’t reply. “Besides, how could my helping you help them? Why don’t you just tell Gensco? Take the commiter, call Maigret, and tell her. Let Gensco handle it.” “If Gensco sets up a watch on the creche, I won’t be able to get in. And they won’t give me what’s mine as thanks for uncovering Parallax, either.” She balanced the cup on her lap. “Gensco won’t be told until I have my stuff and I’m on my way out of the system.” “Moral blackmail,” Jes said with revulsion. “You’re immune to it, aren’t you? Your heap of treasure is far more important than those lives.” “The children won’t suffer. They’re in stasis, they’ll never know what hit them.” “Holy Mother, you’re a bitch.” “Perhaps. Help me, and I’ll fix your ship.” Jes made a sharp gesture. “What makes you think the agent isn’t there already? It’s been seven hours since you came here.” “Because he’s busy looking for me. To kill me. I’m as much a threat to him as he is to me, and until he offs me he can’t do anything else.” She looked up. “The cold creche is in an orbiting satellite. There are fifty-eight of them. I don’t know which is the right one, but I think that, by now, the agent does. I wiped the office memory before the fight, so Gensco knows we found something. They don’t know what, but they’ll soon know for sure that I was one of the finders.” “Why?” “Because Maigret’s pretty office is fairly well splattered with my blood. All they have to do is type it. There’s only one Theresan on the Station.” Jes stared at her. Both Parallax and Gensco were following her, and the trail led directly to his cabin, to himself. “There’s another choice,” he said. “I could call Maigret myself, tell her what you’ve been doing, what condition you’re in. If necessary, I could even hurt you.” “The moment Parallax knows that Gensco’s on to him, he’ll head for the creche without waiting to finish with me. And you could hurt me, if necessary.” She lay still, the bandage thick and stark on her shoulder, her arm strapped to her waist under her breasts, her expression calm. “All right,” Jes said at last. “Fix my ship and I’ll get you to the cold creche. I’ll even take you out of Priory. And then I never want to see you again.” “Why is it,” Tatha murmured, “that people keep saying that to me?” She swung her legs out of the bed and stood. “You’d best order something for me to wear, tauCaptain. And a jacket or cloak to cover the shoulder. We have another four hours, I’d guess, before things get hot.” Jes, on his way to the clensor to retrieve his Certificate, stopped. “Four hours? How are you going to get my leads plate in four hours?” “I had your plate yesterday, I stole it from another bay before I went into Gem Sphere. And it’s four hours before any blood tests come up conclusive, if they haven’t screwed things up. We haven’t much time.” When the suit arrived, Jes helped her put it on. With a short jacket covering her sling, Jes’ sack cradled in her good arm, and her hair covered by a hood, she led the way to the repairs bay. She couldn’t climb the rope to the sloop, so Jes lowered the ship to within a few meters of the floor of the bay. She sat on the hull giving directions while Jes soldered and positioned and sealed, and she ran the checks with professional ease. Two and a half hours after they began, the job was finished. Tatha reached for Jes’ chronometer, then suddenly flicked off the pocket light. The noise was slight but definite. Someone, walking through the far side of the bay, knocked against a piece of loose metal. Tatha silently collected her tools and dropped them into her pouch, touched Jes, and slid down the hull of the sloop. When Jes landed beside her, she pulled his head down and whispered, her lips brushing his ear. “Parallax.”  She put her fingers over his mouth. “Go inside. If I’m not back in an hour, get out of Priory, fast.” She disappeared into the darkness of the repairs bay. Jes hesitated, then slid into the darkness after her. Another clink of metal sounded from the far side of the bay. The agent was either inept, which Jes doubted, or wounded, which was possible, or as eager to find Tatha as she was to find him. Jes crept in the direction of the sound. Another scrape of sound, closer this time. Jes paused, wondering if the agent was armed. The glow from the commiter bank lit the space before him. He stepped back from the light and someone grabbed him and locked a hard, unfurred arm around his neck. Jes had fought in the crowded back alleys of MarketPort; his response was smooth and immediate. In two movements he was free of the hold and attacking. His assailant made a small, surprised noise before silencing into battle. Jes fought at a level beyond conscious thought. He judged moves, circled, retreated, engaged with sudden ferocity. The agent carried a knife; small, silent, ancient, and efficient. Jes feinted, reversed, and kicked the knife from the agent’s hand. Within the intensity of the moment he was aware of Tatha poised by the commiter, her good arm upraised, hand hard and flat. Jes edged his opponent around until the agent’s back was to the Theresan, and shoved him backwards. Tatha brought her arm down across the agent’s neck. The man staggered. Then Jes had him in a firm grip, pinned to the dirty floor of the bay, and Tatha stood above them both. “You fight as dirty as I do,” she said to Jes, and knelt beside the agent. “Gensco knows,” the agent said. “Or will.” His voice was a light tenor, pleasant despite the harshness of his breathing. “Take me with you. I’ll let you take what you want, and you can leave me there.” “No,” Tatha said. “Tell me where the creche is.” The agent shook his head. “Tatha, listen to him. It makes sense.” She rocked back on ther heels, looking at Jes. “Our friend here said something very interesting yesterday, before he knifed me.” Jes felt the muscles below him tense, and he shifted his grip. The agent went limp again. “He said,” Tatha continued,  “‘Where’s your friend from Aerie?’ Does that mean anything to you?” “Idiot,” the agent said. “You don’t need him. I’d have bought him from you - “ He gasped as Tatha ran a claw down his leg. “Where is it?” she said. “I’m not going to tell you,” the agent said in his pleasant voice. “I think I owe you something,” Tatha replied, and her voice was not pleasant at all. Neither was what followed. Jes held on and turned his face away, bracing his hands against the movement between them, trying not to listen as the agent’s breath caught, moaned, sobbed. “Tatha,” Jes muttered, but she ignored him. The agent’s back arched. He said a string of numbers, and went limp. Jes looked. Even one-handed, Tatha was remarkably efficient. “Is he dead?” “No.” Tatha wiped her claws on her pants leg. When she looked at Jes her eyes were wide and clear and cold. “Do you want to do that?” “God, Tatha.” “Then I will.” She unsheathed her claws again. “No!” Jes stood, breathing unevenly. “No. I’ll do it.” Tatha looked at him, considering. The agent moaned. Without changing her expression, Tatha bent down and sliced open his throat. “Come along, captain,” she said. “We haven’t much time.” Jes lingered a moment longer, still in shock, and ran after Tatha. She leaped into the sloop ahead of him and settled in the navigator’s web. He locked the hatch and stood behind her. “Tatha - “ “I said, we haven’t much time.” She slipped her arm from the sling and swung it cautiously back and forth. “I’ve programmed your navigator. The creche is about an hour from here, nearing the northern pole. I don’t think you should wait for takeoff clearance.” Jes webbed himself in, fighting nausea, and flicked through a first check before warming the engines. As soon as the tattletales turned green, he lifted the sloop over the dead ships in the bay. The cables which held it snapped and fell free. Tatha leaned in front of him and did something with the call beam, and the gates of the first airlock swung open. “They’ll track us, but I’ve set your identity beamer to a standard Gensco code. They won’t bother us until we approach the creche. We’ll have to move fast, then.” Tatha fell uncharacteristically silent. Jes looked at her; she swung her arm back and forth, her forehead creased. The bloodstains on her thigh dried and darkened. He turned away. The tracking screen glittered. Tatha rotated her shoulder and made a small noise. The tattletales for the new leads plate were steady; the pressure in the ship was constant. The rind of Gensco station passed below, monotonously irregular. Tatha kept working her arm. A brittle, tense silence filled the sloop’s small bridge. Jes relaxed his shoulders and wondered if this howling silence would last until he had finally deposited Tatha and her precious fortune on some distant planet. His hands ached, remembering the agent’s body twisting between them. He wished, desperately, that she would at least hum, and it was as much to quiet the running of his memory as to break the silence that he finally spoke. “What will happen to Tammas?” he said, peering at the tracking screen. “Nothing. He’ll pour beer and cook stew until he dies, or until The Lab decides its time to fight again. Then either someone will remember to come get him, or Gensco will kill him.” “He knows this?” “He knows it.” Her voice was without expression. The dreadful silence threatened to fall again. “And Min?” “Your bedmate? She’s a Labber. She’ll carry her cargo back to The Lab and spend time until the next run planning warfare. If she’s lucky, she’ll live to see her old age.” “You don’t care about any of them, do you?” “Why should I? I didn’t ask to be part of their lives or part of their problems.” She swung her arm in wider arcs. “Why don’t you take a painkiller?” “Later.” He bit back a rude comment and watched his screens. Better silence than this abrupt, abrasive conversation. “You wouldn’t have killed him,” Tatha said. Jes tightened his grip on the thrust slide and the ship spurted forward. He eased it back to cruising speed. “You didn’t expect me to, did you?” “I was hoping,” she said. “Do you know what would have happened to him, if I’d left you to it?” “He’d still be dead. Your session with him was more than enough.” “If Gensco had him, and they probably would, they’d have patched him together enough to get him to talk, then killed him far more unpleasantly than I did.” She let that sink in. “Be grateful for my bloodthirsty instincts, captain. Because if Gensco had him and he talked, we’d be met with fire when we approach the creche. We’d be killed. And that, I think, is a fairly high price to pay for a misplaced humanitarian gesture.” Jes turned to her, shaking with anger. “You are a bloodthirsty, inhuman, soulless bitch.” “Oh, come. You refused to kill a man who would have taken you and used you against your own people, for evil ends and with no more concern than you think I’ve shown toward the Labbers. I’m not an inhuman bitch, tauCaptain. I’m a predator. What does that make you?” She rose and paced about the bridge. Jes, unable to think of a reply of sufficient power, turned his back on her. He remembered that he’d once found her attractive and his stomach turned again. After a while, she started humming. “What in hell is that tune?” he demanded. She came out of his cabin and walked along the supply racks, peering into them. “It’s a love song, tauCaptain. An old one. Western wind, when wilt thou blow The small rain down can rain? Christ, that my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again.” The words were not in Standard, and Jes did not understand them. “Prewar Terran lit was the most useless major they offered at Egliesa,” she said. “So I took it.” “I’m not surprised.” “Oh, and I loved it, tauCaptain. Not all my urges are black and complicated.” She found an insulation sheet and a carry pack, and was busy stuffing one into the other with one hand. She managed to do it gracefully. Jes looked to his board again. There were fewer blips on the tracking screen now. Jes checked the bridge chronometer. “We’re approaching the pole,” he said. Tatha tucked her carry pack under her seat and webbed herself in again. “It’s a Beta-class satellite, probably with an open space landing grid, probably with at least three alarm buggies. Following a steady course; they ought to be at four down, twelve across relative to the pole. Priory warehouse markings, look for three letters, three numbers, two letters, one number. They should have a standard codebeam.” She stared at the tracking screen. “If they’ve changed orbit, we’re lost.” Jes spotted three likely blips on the screen and flashed code demands to them. One was an inbound freighter, another was a hulk. The third answered in the proper letter and number sequence. Jes slid his ship into a new heading and approached. “We don’t want the main grid,” Tatha said. “It’s probably watched. Tuck around the side.” As he did so, the commiter beeped. Tatha reached over his shoulder and turned it off. She touched the vision screen. “There. That’s perfect.” It was a small grid, almost invisible under the satellite’s markings. Jes dropped the sloop and felt the clamps lock in as Tatha left her seat and slid into the harness of a Barre suit. She slung her carrypack on her back and her toolcase about her waist before activating the suit’s field. Jes stood while she walked to the airlock and slammed the hatch behind her. With a helpless oath, he grabbed a second Barre harness, pulled a handlance from its hiding place below the control board, and followed her out of the ship. The field of her suit glimmered in the starlight. Jes followed the shimmer of it and found her kneeling by a thick metal hatch. She leaned forward until the suit’s field covered the locking area and began probing with her tools. Jes looked up and around, but nothing moved in the cold silence. The hatch swung open. They moved inside and clamped the outer door shut. The airlock cycled through and they stepped into a corridor. The corridor was lit only by direction signs. Tatha moved down it without hesitation. Jes drew the handlance and followed, peering around. The silence unnerved him. Tatha hesitated at a branching of the corridor and took two steps down one hall. Nothing happened. She turned and took the other hall. Alarms shrieked, filling the corridor with noise and flashing lights. Tatha ran and Jes hurried behind her. At a second corridor she again took the path of least quiet. The corridor was lined with doors. Tatha opened them until one resisted her hand. She probed the lock and the door opened with a further blast of alarms. Jes stood in the open doorway while Tatha raced down the rows of locked cabinets, peering at the markings on the doors. Jes was unable to make out the words. Tatha stopped, read a label again, and broke the lock on the door. She pulled out a plain gray cylinder, closed off the wires leading to it, and wrapped it in an insulation sheet. The cylinder filled her arms. She ran back into the corridor, with Jes at her heels. People appeared around the far bend; Jes could hear their voices shouting over the sound of the alarms. Tatha glanced back at Jes. He ran ahead of her and pointed the handlance. A traceburn appeared on the floor before the pursuers and they jumped back. Tatha dodged into a flashing corridor and Jes spun to follow. He didn’t understand why the guards weren’t armed until he remembered that they were probably in the area of the cold creche itself; a misaimed bolt would puncture the walls and kill the frozen children. The pursuers appeared at the far end of the hall. Jes waved the lance at them menacingly and they faded back. He saw medical smocks among them - not guards, then, but staff. He ran faster, afraid that if they didn’t reach the lock soon, he’d have to kill someone. The lock’s codeplate glowed scarlet; it had been automatically locked when the alarms went off. Tatha pushed a door open and glanced at Jes. Within the room were the pumps and tubing and regulators that maintained the creches. He nodded. She put her cylinder on the floor by the airlock and fumbled with her tools. When the pursuers appeared, Jes aimed his lance into the regulator room and waited. They stopped and made supplicating gestures, their words lost in the howling of alarms. Tatha threw her tools down, pulled open the airlock door, and ran in. Jes followed, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut, throwing the emergency lock on the inside. The outer door opened and he took a moment to prop it open before following Tatha to the sloop. The inner door would not open with the outer door unsealed; perhaps they had bought a little time. They slid into the webbing without removing the Barre harnesses. “Go,” Tatha said urgently. “Go, go, go!” Jes went. The sloop shuddered and flung itself away from the satellite. As soon as its flight smoothed, Tatha was out of the seat, the cylinder in her arms, and heading for Jes’ cabin. He leaped up, grabbed her wounded shoulder, and turned her around. She almost dropped the cylinder, and Jes snatched it from her. “You call Gensco. That was the deal, remember?” “For God’s sake.” She reached for the cylinder. He held it away from her. “Give it to me,” she said desperately. Jes shook his head. “You call now, or I’ll jettison this. I swear it.” Tatha grabbed the commiter mike, punched the all-bands transmitter, sent her message twice, and banged the mike down on the control board. She grabbed the cylinder from Jes and ran into the cabin. The bolt snicked shut behind her. Jes turned to the commiter. Maigret’s voice cut across the shouting; she ordered guards and seals around the cold creche, and sent out flights of interceptors. But the tausloop had been built for speed, and Jes pushed it to its limits. The interceptors dropped farther and farther behind. The sloop’s navigational computer locked into the grab’s coordinates. When the Grabmaster’s face, puffy with sleep, appeared on the screen, Jes demanded grab clearance before the ‘master had a chance to talk. “Why all the hurry, dear?” the ‘master said. “Surely you’ve a moment to chat.” “I don’t have a moment for anything,” Jes said. “I’m interested in getting the hell out of this fucking sector, forgetting it exists, and not hearing another word out of you or anyone else in Priory from now until doomsday. Do I have my clearance?” “Oh, dear. You were impolite down there, weren’t you? And after all my warnings. The commiters have been simply frantic for the past hour. Well, you can’t blame others for your own lack of manners, my dear. Yes, yes, don’t carry on so. It’s not a Federation complaint they have against you, so my hands are tied. Pity. You have your clearance, sweetling. ‘Bye.” The ‘master signed off in a flutter of jewels and fingers, and Jes dropped the sloop into the embrace of the coils. HE’D TAKE HER TO MARKETPORT AND DUMP her there, he decided. And he’d tell her, if she ever came out of his cabin. They had been in tau for three hours and the door remained bolted; by putting his ear against it he could hear her moving about within the cabin, and the sharp clatter of metal on metal. No singing, no humming, no quick spill of words. He pounded on the door but she didn’t answer. Eventually he returned to the control board and slumped before it, thinking angry thoughts. Half an hour later, the gauges on the power grid jumped to full and stayed there. Jes’ stomach felt cold. He ran through every tattletale on the board, then through every sensor, but found nothing. The drain remained high. Cursing, he strode through the ship, checking everything manually, and still could not find the drain. He beat on the cabin door. “Tatha! Come out of there! Something’s broken again.” She didn’t answer. He put his ear to the door. The metallic sounds were gone; now he heard her voice indistinctly. It sounded as though she were pleading: the words became melody, and the melody became words. “Tatha! Damn it, get your ass out of there!” She ignored him. Suddenly suspicious, he ran to the board and retraced the drain. It stemmed from his cabin. He pounded the cutoff switch and the grid didn’t so much as twitch - she must have opened the paneling and bypassed the cutoff. He cursed and made a series of calculations. If she kept up the drain, they wouldn’t have the power to make MarketPort. He fetched a laser and prepared to cut through the cabin door. As suddenly as it had risen, the grid dropped to normal again. Jes put his ear to the door and listened to total silence. Setting his jaw, he activated the laser and sliced through the door. The cabin was a catastrophe. Panels along one side had been ripped open and wires trailed from the conduits across the floor. The desk and table were invisible under a complicated arrangement of wires and resistors, crafted from the ruins of the wall conduits. He recognized component parts of his chip scanner along the edges of the cylinder that Tatha had stolen from the cold creche. The cylinder itself was open along the top. The room was unbearably warm. He turned to the rest of the room and found Tatha. She lay sideways in the wide hammock, her eyes closed, blood seeping from her wounded shoulder. The fur along her arms was singed; her Barre harness and suit had disappeared. Held close to her body, cradled in her arms, a small, gray-furred infant sucked at her breast. Jes lowered the laser and leaned against the door, staring. “Something of my own,” she had said. “Not easily replaceable.” “My lover died.” The infant’s tiny hand curled in the fur of her breast. He pulled himself away from the wall, walked to the hammock, and looked down at Tatha and her jewel. A trickle of blood touched the small fingers. Jes cleaned them gently with his fingertips. Tatha opened her eyes and looked at him without expression. He took a steadying breath. “I think,” he said, “that I’d better tend your shoulder again.” Tatha closed her eyes, and the ghost of a smile played about her lips.