Crystal Heat

7

Lylunda stood on the balcony outside Grinder’s company parlor. His house was on the high side of the Izar, tall enough to catch breezes over the Wall, breezes not tainted by ship exhaust and slaughterhouses. It was a big place, built in a square about a large central court with a fountain and trees and flower beds. And children everywhere.

“Kak! Grinder. They all yours?”

He grinned. “That’s what their mothers tell me. Actually, no. Couple of the youngest are my grandkids. Would you believe it, Luna? Me, a grandpa.”

She watched him beaming down on the busy scene and felt a coldness start to gather under her ribs. There was something so… proprietorial and… oh… lethal about him. This is my place, he said. My place. My house. My children. My women. If he starts thinking about me like that… “You’d best let me have a look at Lerdo’s documentation. I have to know what I’m talking about when I meet your son.”

6. Worming into Haundi Zurgile

Worm slipped the Kinu Kanti into Hutsartes atmosphere above the major continent of the Wild Half, the hemisphere the Behilarr hadn’t bothered to settle yet. He went warily at first, then relaxed as the readouts told him that what he’d picked up about the place was true, not enough security to keep out a tesh fly.

When he was at a level to go on visual screens, he looked at the tangle of unsavory vegetation sliding beneath him and decided the Behilarr didn’t have to worry about anyone coveting this place. He shifted direction, went circumpolar, and began a metal scan of the coastline that belonged to the settled continent, keeping the visuals on to give him a look at what was being probed. Low and slow ate power, but he was operating on the Kliu’s credit chip, so he’d topped up at the transfer station and was feeling comfortably prodigal at the moment.

He slowed further when he began picking up a signal as a string of islands came into the screen. Metallic smear, size uncertain, shape uncertain-he was nearly on top of it before he could nail which island it was on.

There was a hollow in the vegetation with withered edges, enough to suggest a ship had put down here and the very faint traces he was picking up had to mean it was a smuggler’s ship, equipped to escape most detection.

He chortled as he changed direction again and started back across the ocean. “Lylunda Elang. Gotcha.”

He set the Kinu Kanti down in a small stony canyon in the coast range of a continent in the Wild Half and started cycling through the shutdown/conceal procedures, brooding all the while over the last thing his father had told him. Keep those scivs sweet, Worm. They’ve got your brothers. Two of them now because you din’t bother using that useless lump a gristle atop your neck You shouldda known we couldda fetched Xman out of contract easy enough. I tell you to your face, we gotta get Mort loose, he’s the only one of the lot of you who’s got the guts to run this place. Snake over ’t next Rift, he been shooting eyes this way. So you keep ’em happy till we get that girl and make the trade.

Worm shivered when he thought of his older brother and some of the things that Mort had done to give him the rep that kept Snake and Herbie and the other Riftmen backed off. If Mort hadn’t been his brother and blood was sacred after all, he’d have been just as happy to leave him scrabbling about Pillory scurfing off other gits as murderous as him.

Time to do the sweetening, to let the Kliu know he was on the job and making time. He worked over the message for several minutes, then played it back. Am down on Hutsarte, Behilarr Colony. Have got suggestive though inconclusive evidence the smuggler is here. Will be going undercover for close-up observation. Will keep under advisement the listed possible agents of Excavations Ltd. and report if any such are spotted. Clandestine conditions of investigation require limiting exposure to detection, so contact will be sporadic for the next few weeks.

It seemed adequate, saying as little as possible while giving the impression he was being forthcoming. As good as anything Xman could write. Xman was the talker of the family, the tongue that was quicker even than Mort’s knifes. Worm sighed, missing his brother a lot as he coded and compressed the message, squirted it on its way. “Choke on that, stinking scivs.”

He waited a while longer, watching the readouts to be sure the squirt hadn’t pinned him, then he extracted the ship’s flikit and once again started across the ocean.