Crystal Heat

4

“Lylunda.”

Down on the floor of the Warehouse, Worm glanced up from the game of hezur-hairi he was playing with three of Krink’s men.

Grinder was leaning on the landing rail outside his office.

Worm saw Lylunda’s shoulders tighten. She palmed the latch, locking the plug door, then she turned slowly, a smile pasted onto her face. “Yes, Grinder?”

“Labaki needs to see you about the Nameday feast. Come to dinner tonight, you can talk to her afterward.”

“All right. I have to go home first, get cleaned up, and clear away some stuff that needs doing. Dinner around eight?”

He scowled at her, but it’d been his choice to make this public, and her response had been clever enough to maintain the distance between them. “Eight,” he said and went back inside.

As Worm gathered in the hairu, he thought, I was right. He going to put the move on her any day now and she knows it. Doesn’t like it much either. Any bets she isn’t thinking of blowing off this whole business and hitting for the ’split? Which reminds me. Something I shouldda done a while ago. Got to get outta here.

He shook the hairu, cast them into the kaxa, and swore as the numbers cleaned four of his five stakes off the board. “My luck’s took a walk. Maq, any reason I got to hang round here letting you lot walk off with my coin?”

Cursing the horde of sticky, crawling insects and the corrosive sap of the vines that oozed out at the lightest touch, ate at his wholesuit and etched the clear plastic of the goggles, Worm wriggled through the fecund growth on the island and managed to crawl beneath the camoucloth without touching it.

The darkness meant he had to use the helmet light to find his way to the ship, which brought more hordes of fliers crashing into him. The wholesuit was sealed and he couldn’t smell the stench he knew had to be out there, but the thought of it was enough to start his stoniach churning.

He forced himself not to hurry, but it seemed forever before he found the markings on the maintenance hatch. He took the rod of memory plas from his pouch, twisted it, and waited until it finished extending to its full length and extruding rungs like thorns from the sides.

The hatchlock was simple, but once he had it solved, he didn’t try opening the slide until he’d sprayed the area to clear it of spores and other contaminants and temp-bonded the sticktight to the hull. He spread a sheet of waldoplas over the clean spot, sealed it in place, then pushed the door back. Working through the plas, he broke the temp-bond, stripped the shrinkwrap off the sticktight, reached inside, and pressed the flat patch against the wall until he felt the brief heat as it glued itself in place and took on the coloring of its surroundings. It wouldn’t activate its beacon until the ship had dropped into the insplit; until then it was just a bump on the wall and as near undetectable as anything he’d worked with-and it would go back to being a lump the moment the ship surfaced into real-space.

Getting out was faster than getting in.

An hour later the flikit was back in the shed, he’d shucked the wholesuit and run at through the sterilizer, and was in the fresher of the safehouse, playing the hand-held needle spray over his body, washing away even the memory of all that creeping, crawling life.

Bug glanced slyly at Worm, who was froWning over the situation his players were in and trying to decide how to extract them. “What you getting Daddo for his Nameday feast?”

Worm blinked. “Huh? I’m supposed to get him something?”

“You don’t hafta, but he likes it if you do.”

“Ha! Fa’s like that, too, but he’s never satisfied whatever you get. What would your Daddo think was the right kind of present?”

“Time’s up. My turn. Doesn’t have to be anything special, just show you took time to think about him. He likes knives. If you could find one that looked a little bit different…”

Worm contemplated developments on the screen. “You are seriously evil, Bug. How am I going to get my men out of that bind? He going to be expecting everyone over to his house that day?”

“In and out. Some stay for dinner, some just come in and give the gift.” Bug frowned at the screen. With Worm’s hands hidden behind the workshield around the sensorboard, he couldn’t watch the setup; he had to catch the small changes as they showed up on the mosaic so he could get ready to counter Worm’s move.