Crystal Heat

4

As Worm swung the flikit south, skimming just above the long surges of the ocean waves-to avoid being spotted from Haundi Zurgile and chased by the local authorities, he saw a dark seed flying low over the water near the northern horizon. “Must be the spy’s flier.” He clicked on the screen and focused the pickups north-and blinked at the gyrations of that flier; it was swooping in long arcs, racing low enough to cream the water, lifting and darting about like a waterbug having fits.

“What’s all that? Has she lost it?”

The flier turned suddenly and swooped north, vanishing over the horizon. Worm took a chance and sent the flikit higher. He saw the flier swoop toward the first of the island chain, a hump of rock with a tree and some seagrass, dart round it, dive toward the next island. He saw something else, too-another flier hovering over toward the land. “Gotcha. Grinder or the local lice. She knows the watcher is there and she’s holding cover until she can get loose enough to run for the Wild Half.”

He dropped the flikit again and squeezed all the speed out of it that he could manage when he was flying this low. Too bad he couldn’t go up-and-over, but the locals got mean with any unauthorized flights they happened to spot. He understood that. It was a matter of cash; they wanted their passage fees and their storage fees and their taxes.

He’d gotten most of what he needed from the woman, a new target. He was going after Harmon, going to get there first and shoot the clot full of babble, pry out of him where he left the woman and go pick her up. No more fussing about, catering to locals. He didn’t have time for that. He wasn’t happy about having to admit to his father that someone had scooped the smuggler out from under him again, but he needed his father’s sources. Fa would know where Harmon was headed next. He kept up on that kind of thing. Funny how he could, since he was stuck in that Sustainer back on Teripang. The drain of keeping him alive was why Worm and Mort and Xman had to do so much work. More coin. All the time more coin, so Fa could pamper his sources. Sasa, this time for once, that pampering might pay off.

When he’d nearly reached the shore of the Wild Half, he heard the scream of a full-power lift and saw the flare of a ship’s drivers burn an arc toward the Break-Point.

“Zoll! She wasn’t heading here, the bint went and nicked the Elang’s ship.” He grinned. “I like her. She’s got class. She really must have come here on a worldship as part of her cover. Din’t have her own, knew one was handy, so she went out and got it.” Neat solution to the problem of getting away from Grinder without handing him her head.

The locals started firing at her. He saw the dot seem to jump sideways, the missiles swerved and missed. Then she was gone.

He tapped the controls, had the flikit berth open and waiting as soon as he reached the canyon. He left the servos to locking the flikit down and raced toward the Bridge. If he could just get into the air fast enough and into the insplit behind her, he could track her. That way he wouldn’t h4ve to bother Fa; he could put off the skin peel he was bound to get when he had to tell him what happened.

“Spy, sweet spy, I owe you a favor. Now let’s see if I can get off this mudball without a sting up my tail.”

13. More Detours

Shadith slid the Dragoi into the berth next to Digby’s ship in the University tie-down, took the shuttle to the surface and a hopper to the main campus at Citystate Rhapsody, an immense complex on the coast of the largest of the three continents. As one who owned Voting Stock, she had a studio apartment in one of the Megarons. She’d kept it even though it was likely she’d not spend much time there, because it meant she’d always have a place to go no matter what happened to the job with Digby.

It felt good to be back, clicking along in a chainchair, basking in the sunlight of a late spring day and watching the crowds of students and Scholars moving through the streets. She didn’t see any faces she knew, but she’d been on Digby’s payroll nearly three years now and gone most of that time; the populations in all the Citystates of University were fluid as mud geysers, shifting and changing with the phases of the moon as it were-the same types, though, over and over, Cousins and non, curiously alike in their common purpose. It was a good place to be, for a while, at least.

Feeling weightless and free, very much like she felt when she left Pillory and crawled out of the exoskeleton, she touched on the light in her apartment, tossed her bag into a chair, and combed her hands through her hair. “Aaaahhhhhhh…” The sound was concentrated pleasure and ended on a brief happy laugh.

She clicked on the viewer, ran through the menu, chose a chamber group she knew, then rambled around the apartment moving to the music, touching her books, the small carvings she’d picked up here and there (cat, she thought, renewing my scent marks), pulling off her clothes and kicking them into a pile, going into the kitchen where she snatched packs of tea from the stasis box and started water boiling on the stove.

She took a long shower, washed her hair, pulled on a robe, settled in a chair with her feet up and the teapot beside her; at first she watched a news summary, then she tuned in a drama by one of the writers she’d worked with when she was taking a course in musical theater.

Vul ri Pustan-ili was a Sparglan from a world he called Makusij, which he said was so far out of touch it was a good thing the local life spans were numbered in centuries rather than decades. He was fascinated by the ephemeral qualities of Cousin views on life and love and was immersing himself in them in order to understand the joy and tragedy of such a swiftly passing awareness. From what she could see, he was persevering in this, his peculiar humor and odd angle of approach still part of his charms as a writer.

Twenty minutes into the play, though, she fell asleep.