Crystal Heat

1

The pulse from the beacon cut off as the Spy emerged from the ’split.

When Worm reached the Limit’and surfaced, he listened to the Shriek of the transfer station, swore when he heard the University ID. “Why here? I don’t understand. Harmon wouldn’t come near this place.”

Instead of continuing on to the tie-down, he slipped sideways and took the Kanti into a polar orbit about one of the outer planets.

His respite was gone, run down the drain. He sat for some time scowling at the corn screen. “I should have called Fa. It was the right thing to do. I wasted a month’s travel time because I lost my nerve.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she’s figured out something else. Maybe…” He sighed and punched in his father’s call sign, then waited for the connect.

When the screen lit, it was a girl’s face he saw instead of his father’s. Trish. “Where’s Fa, Coz?”

“Having a flush-out. Kliu called, said about Mort hanging on a thread. He took it bad. You got good news? Don’t know how he’d take more bad.”

“No good, no bad, just got more traveling to do. Need Fa’s sources.”

“You know he don’t let no one tap the source node. You gonna have to wait till he can talk, least twelve hours. That too long?”

“Maybe so, maybe no, but I damnsure can’t move without I’ve got some place to go to.”

“Ta, then. Talk to you when.”

Worm went limp as the stiffening he’d summoned drained out of him. It was all to do again,, nerving himself to face his father’s anger and maybe give him another seizure when he had to confess what happened. He got wearily to his feet and went to scrub the galley once again. At least when you cleaned something, you could see what you’d accomplished.

“… just a couple a days ’fore I was at go on the snatch, some local piv’r hauls her in to cop shop and she don’t come out, what comes out is some femme fixed up in her clothes. I get on corn to the Kliu and complain they interfering with the op, that I hear they trying it on with the locals to pick the smuggler up and ship her over to Pillory so they can get out of contract they got with us. I din’t ask if they got her, I just said they were messing me up. And-what ol’ Kliu he says makes me some sure they han’t got her. Grinder’s kid, he said it was her Fa who got her, he’s some mucko in the cop shop. The kid thinks mucko got biters up his ezel when Kliu ticket come by him and he whiffed her off somewhere he don’t have to look for her in. Anyway, I see this femme who’s Digby’s agent fijjing around trying to finger the smuggler, so I put the ear on her and I pick up she’s got her hands on ship lists and she figures the mucko passed his daughter off to Harmon, you know him, scurf who sold Snake that stale cpe, so he could dump her in some Never Find. So I figure I get to Harmon first, shoot him to ears with babble, go where he dropped her. Isn’t likely she’ll have the same kind of protection she bought on Hutsarte. So I need to know where Harmon’s going and how long it’s gonna taker to get there.”

When the spate of words was finished, words he hoped didn’t sound too much like whiner’s excuses-Fa hated whining-Worm sat stiffly upright, hands curled tight about the arms of the chair, waiting for the blast he knew was coming.

It didn’t come. His father’s mouth shaped itself into an unconvincing smile and when he spoke, it was in a tone of mild disappointment. No thundering scarification, no skin-peeling scarcasm. “Sasa, I had hoped for better news. You done good, Worm. You done right. Give me a minute, I’ll call up what you want and pulse it through. A father’s Blessings on you, boy.”

The screen blanked and a moment later, the keph tinged to let him know the data blip had arrived.

Worm stirred. He felt sick.

His father was frightened. He’d never seen his father frightened of anything.

“I’m the last of his sons maybe and he’s licking up to me so I won’t go off and leave him. Cousins aren’t the same. He shouldn’t do that, makes me feel… he shouldn’t do that.”

The ship was still well-enough supplied for a couple more months of ’splitting, but the comp on Harmon had him heading for a warzone in the Sakuta System, so Worm had another bite at Kliu credit and topped off at the University Transfer Station. Still uncertain about his father, replaying the call, worrying over every word, watching his father’s every expression, trying to convince himself it wasn’t fear he was seeing but only the result of the purge Fa had just been through, he headed for the Limit and the two-week journey to the Mouse Cluster.

The beacon started pulsing again four hours after his journey had begun and the pulse stayed with him, the locator showing it behind and off to one side.

So that was why University. Someone there had told the Spy where to find Harmon and she was going for him.