Crystal Heat

5

Travel times being what they were, when Shadith slid into the tie-down at Marrat’s, it was almost a year standard since the last time she’d visited the Market, but the Directors hadn’t forgotten her and were decidedly not happy to see her back there. About thirty seconds after the tug ’bots drifted the ship up to the hitch and locked it down, her shortrange corn chimed, a Blurdslang face appeared and she was ordered to report to the OverSec complex immediately.

She sat in a small glassed-in alcove, the people passing by glancing incuriously at her, none of them coming in.

She sat.

And sat.

And waited.

This was deliberate. The Directors wouldn’t want to get Digby annoyed at them, but they didn’t like at all having one of his ops show up without his informing them that she was coming. And they were showing their displeasure.

She’d set herself a limit of three hours. If they didn’t see her before then and let her soothe their little minds, she was leaving. Digby could stir his photons and see if he could identify the smuggler from the description she’d gotten from the Taalav. And then she’d have to decide once more how she wanted to play this.

The image of the Kliu Berej slaughtering the odd little creatures haunted her. Somehow she had to find the arrays and get them away, hide them in a place the Kliu couldn’t reach. Couldn’t reach? Why didn’t I think of it before? Vrithian. No, not Vrithian, the next world out. Storsten. It’s a heavy world like Pillory. Vrithian’s sister world. People have been looking for that system for centuries without getting a smell of it and Lee only found it because her Mum came and got her. Harskari… maybe she can help, she likes gardening… I need to talk to Lee… but I have to find the smuggler first. Have to get her to tell me where they are… She sighed. Digby’s going to have kittens… and I have to find something else to do with my life……

After about an hour and a half of the observers watching her doze, a juvenile Blurdslang drove his nutrient bowl into the room and clicked it in behind the desk. He activated the voice cube and fixed-watery eyes on her.

“What is Digby’s interest in the Market and why didn’t he inform us of his intentions?’

“I’m on leave at the moment, that’s why you weren’t informed. I’m doing a favor for the mother of a friend. Adelaar aici Arash of Adelaris Security Systems.”

‘What favor?”

“I’m to find and interview a young woman who left her employ under clouded circumstances. If the interview is satisfactory, I am to arrange passage for her to University. It’s a very simple business. A call to Adelaris will verify this.”

“The young woman’s name?”

“She may not be using it at the moment, but the name I was given is Mink ac Vissyn. A young Fulladerin from Saber Minor.” She slipped a cased flake from her pouch, seta it on the desk. “Her bio data’s here, if you’d like to take a copy.”

After a moment’s laborious cogitation he tapped off the voice cube and shrilled a spate of Blurdsla into the corn, counting as usual on the fact that few people beyond his species could understand his speech. Shadith kept her face still. She couldn’t get everything, some of the sounds were outside her hearing range, but she could pick up a lot of what was being, said. It was hardly.worth the effort because he was announcing they’d all wasted their time stewing in their dishes over nothing. And what was he supposed to do with the flake she was waving at him?

He listened, tapping irritably with the tips of the thready fingers at the end of a tentacle. When the burst of speech from the com was finished, he reactivated the voice cube. “You will remember that any action against a firm established in any Node of the Market will be dealt with severely. The list of Market Laws and the penalties for violations of them are waiting for you in the Mimarose Ottotel. Review them before you begin your search. You may leave now. Take your flake with you, we are not interested.”

The Node diurn was nearing its end as Shadith left the OverSec complex, the bubble darkening, ripples of vermilion and saffron shimmering behind the flat roofs of the other buildings in the Security Complex. She was feeling quite pleased with herself and had to work to keep from grinning. “We are not interested,” she murmured. “And if you believe that, see this phial I’m holding. Those few golden drops are the Vryhh formula for immortality. I swear it’s true. Tsa!”

The street was empty except for a few peacer ’bots returning for an info dump and recharging. This wasn’t a plac’e where people strolled for pleasure. She marched to the chair pen and thumbed on a chainchair, climbed into it and let it click her toward the lock and the pneumo line that would get her into the Ottotel Node. A rain was scheduled in that Node. Nice. Clean the air and wash everything down. “Then I start hunting. Chatting up everyone I can get to talk to me.”