Crystal Heat

5

The room was small, but solid-grills on the windows, a door with a bar-lock ’and a sheet of plasteel laminated to the inside, up on the third floor of a five-key building. It had a tiny alcove with a hotplate and a miniature oven set into the wall, and the bed was a narrow cot, hard enough to pound yarns on. There was a coinbath down the hall and a small greengrocers on the ground floor where vegetables and eggs were expensive but available without having to face the dangers of the street, especially after dark.

On her first day in the new place, Lylunda soaked the ankle and wrapped it’in a pneumabrace, shot it with pain suppressant, and gave herself a full spectrum kataph to flush out the parasites she’d picked up on her way into the city.

She dozed for a long-time to let the drugs work, then spent the evening planning and revising plans until she was tired of tramping along the same ruts: It was full dark out when she woke to a chime that left her confused until she remembered what the concierge had said about the mail warn.

It was a note from Zaintze giving the details of her appointment tomorrow with Grinder Jiraba-and along with the note, a parcel with clothing the old woman had bought for her. Plus a hefty bill for that clothing.

She looked it over and grinned. “Cunning old lukie. Wonder how much she padded this.”

There were two plain black skirts with narrow bands of embroidery about hems that would hit her around the ankles, two plain white blouses with high necks and long sleeves and two hemmed lengths of black silk for folding about her head. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of wearing long sleeves and a demi-turban in the steamy heat that belonged with this time of the year, but Auntee Zi was right. This was righteous garb, announcing don’t mess with me. There were also half a dozen pairs of silk underpants and three sleeveless undershirts. And Zaintze’d got the size right. Cunning old lukie indeed.

She fixed an omelet and sat on the bed to eat it, her injured ankle propped on one of the straightback chairs. When she finished, she set the plate on the bed beside her, propped the second foot beside the first, and watched the sky turn improbable colors through the bars of the window.

How very strange… she hadn’t thought about it until now… until she saw the calendar in the greengrocers…

You don’t think about planetary dates much when you’re ’splitting here and ’splitting there. It doesn’t seem worth the bother, all those different ways of reckoning. Ship’s kephalos stayed on universal time, that’s all you needed.

She’d looked at the calendar because of the picture, a phot of Hutsarte from the transfer station with the interesting pale fan of the River Jostun’s outflow. Then she read the month. Begiberru, the Month of Buds. The days were numbered in their forty small squares and twenty-five had been crossed off with a red crayon. Twenty-sixth of Begiberru.

Fifteen years ago to the day, her mother died.

Three months later she had her place as trainee and she’d left, so filled with anger it was not possible to grieve.

The layered colors of the sunset blurred as she finally wept for Meerya and her useless death.

On her second day in the Izar, Lylunda dressed in the new clothing, tucked Zaintze’s note with its instructions into a wristpouch next to a small stunrod, and left the rooming house with her keys on a chain round her waist, dropped inside her skirt where they’d be less vulnerable to a snatch-and-grab.

Grinder’s Place was on the far side of the Izar, a huge old warehouse tucked between a slaughterhouse and a flash freeze plant, its back butted against the Wall. From its flat roof you could look down into Star Street or watch the shuttles from the transfer station and the Freeships landing most hours of the day and night.

The sour stench from Star Street mixed with the sweetish aroma of old blood to thicken the air until you almost had to chew it before you could breathe it. She’d forgotten that stench and had trouble keeping her lunch down as she turned a corner and the full glory of it hit her in the face. She thought about it and decided that she appreciated Grinder’s subtlety. Those who lived here got used to the smell; intruders tended to betray themselves as they leaned against the nearest wall and vomited.

The warehouse was a busy place, sleds moving in and out, crates and barrels crowded into every inch of space. Drunks and other sentient debris of various shapes and species sprawled beside the walls in the meager shade provided by shallow niches. In the alley between the warehouse and the flash freeze plant, a standup whore with dead eyes endured the grunting efforts of one of the derelicts who’d panhandled some coin and spent it on her instead of his usual brand of self-destruction.

Lylunda stepped over a sprawled drunk, ignoring his mumbled comments that she couldn’t understand anyway, waited for a sled to whine out, then moved quickly through the opening into the vast dim interior.

Several men moved to meet her, the leader a tall thin man with a face she almost remembered.

“I think you’re lost, woman. This isn’t Star Street.”

As soon as he spoke, she knew who he was. He had a high whiny voice that hadn’t changed at all. “You forgot me already, Krink? I’ve an appointment with Grinder. Tell him, Luna’s here.”

“Walking with your head up, huh? Amu, go see if the Jun Jiraba wants to see this urd.”

Grinder Jiraba leaned back in his chair and rubbed a broad hand across his chin. He’d lived hard since last she’d last seen him and had lost bits of himself in the process. Two of the fingers were nubs; a scar just missed the tip of his right eye and slashed a ravine across his check. His coarse black hair was still thick, but peppered with white and gray. He wore it clipped almost to his skull, barely a centimeter long all over. His shoulders were meaty and his once slim body had acquired a thin padding of fat that did little to conceal the hard muscles beneath, while the weight gave him a force he hadn’t had when he was thin and beautiful.

“Sony to see you back here,” he said.

“When you have to go to ground, best do it where you know the traps.”

“You think you know them?”

“Better than some. It’s been a while and things change, but not that much from what I’ve seen.”

“You aren’t on any passenger lists.”

“Sure of that? What about a Freeship or a false name?”

“I know everyone who goes in and out of Star Street. It’s my business to know. And my business to know who’s chasing you. Don’t play the fool. I remember you too well for that.”

“I’ve been smuggling this and that since I got my ticket. Smuggled myself down. Didn’t want my name on lists Jaink knows who gets a look at.”

“You didn’t answer the question, Lylunda Elang. Who’s chasing you?”

She hesitated, but she’d been over this before, over and over it till she was sick of it; it was a danger to tell him, but if he picked up someone coming after her, he’d squeeze it out of him anyway. Besides, he was right; it was his business to know what was going on in his patch. “The Kliu Berej. They’ve set a bringalive price on my head. It’ll probably take them a while to track me here, but there are noses around able to follow a grain of salt the length of a star arm.”

“Hm. You snatched some Taalav crystals?”

“I’m a smuggler, not a thief. Say someone did and they want him and they think I can tell them where he is. Easy money for you, Grinder. All you have to do is go over the Wall and walk down Star Street.” She waited for his response, more tense than she’d expected to be, watching his eyes, seeing the heat of crystal fever wake in them. She thought she’d judged Grinder and the circumstances that bound him well enough, but you never really, knew how people would jump when pressure was on them.

She knew the moment he made up his mind. He wouldn’t sell her. Not yet, anyway. Not till he lost hope of squeezing crystals out of her…

“I wouldn’t hand those borts on Star Street a used turd,” he said and pushed his chair back. “We’ll go to my house. Want to show you what you’ve got to deal with.” He stood, came round the desk. “Zaintze said she told you about my Second. Herred, he’s not an easy boy. Other kids called him Bug because of the exo. He picked it up and that’s all he lets anyone call him now. Kids, you can’t beat that sort of kak out of them. Bug’s mad all the time at me because I didn’t try it. He’s too young yet to understand that it’d just get worse if I did. Be-a favor if you got him to see that, but I won’t be holding my breath.”

She put a hand on his arm, stopped him before he opened the door. “Speaking about holding your breath, what about Krink? You trust him?”

“The length of a micron if he’s wearing handcuffs and leg irons. He does work I don’t want to do, myself. Efficiency, Luna. Remember ol’ Efficiency Gidur?”

She chuckled, chanted, “The right tool for the right job.” Sobering, she tapped her fingers on the hard muscies. “Watch out this one doesn’t turn in your hand. He’s ambitious. I could smell it on him.”

“Ba da, he’s already tried it and got kicked in the butt for being an idiot. Better the flaws you know. He’s a little worm, thinks little, and couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag. He doesn’t know it, though, and that’s one of the things that makes him dangerous.” He opened the door, stood aside to let her pass. “Luna, arguing life with you is one of the things I missed most after you took off.”

As they walked down the stairs together, she murmured, “I never understood why you stayed. You were smart enough to get out.”

He didn’t answer till they reached the main floor. “This is my place. I wouldn’t feel right anywhere else. I’m not like you. You cut your ties so easy. You were gone even before you left.”

“I never had ties, Grinder. Not then. Not now.”