Crystal Heat

6

The soft squeal of the locator was the only thing that kept him sane in the next month he spent following the Spy.

First there was The Tricky Deacon Pit which he didn’t understand at all until after she took off from there. Information, that’s what it was, she was looking for something and she found out where it was.

Hope rising, he followed the beacon’s intermittent squeal until she surfaced at an out of the way world in the Callidara Pseudo Cluster. Bol Mutiar his Chart told him and the keph said, “Restricted world. Rated purple 9 on the danger scale. Further information interdicted.”

Which raised his brows up to his hairline. He hid in the shadow of a moon and watched the paired ships come round beneath him.

The smuggler’s ship jerked, then began to move away. “Tractor shove. And the umbilical’s cut. Zoll’s Teeth. That has to mean that the smuggler’s here. I’ve got to get down there, no more waiting. I’ve got to drop a loop on both of them before the Spy cuts out on me again.”

He chewed on his lip as he watched a lander emerge from the side of the Spy’s ship, wondering if he should drop a sticktight inside before he went. Maybe she wasn’t like him, maybe she had the maintenance hatch trapped. She thought of things. But if she got away from him this time… no, if she got away this time, it was over. She’d head straight back for Digby, Digby would call the Kliu and collect his fee, and Mort would be dead two heartbeats afterward.

As soon as the shields flared as the lander hit atmosphere, Worm went arcing away. He hit atmosphere twenty minutes later, landed Kanti on a barren islet just big enough to hold her, bonded the EYE to its zipper sled and sent it racing toward the place where the lander touched down.

As he watched her walk toward the children playing on the beach, he thought about activating one of the EYE’s darts and killing her then, but she hadn’t found the smuggler yet and a world is a big place to search and she was a better searcher than he was and she knew things he didn’t.

He watched her face change as she seemed to absorb the langue the children were speaking, though he couldn’t make any sense of it. In less than a heartbeat she was talking back to them and being understood. “Talent. Word is Digby likes Talent, buys it wherever he can. I bet she can truthtell, too, and that’s why she believed or Harmon without worrying about babbling him. No wonder it’s her Digby sent. Spins lies quicker’n a Menaviddan spins web and looks through your lies like you’re made out of glass.”

When she went back to the lander alone, he started the EYE home and chewed on his lip until Kanti’s screen showed her taking the lander up and hovering in the clouds. “She’s looking for something. Those kids told her something. Not enough, I think, but something.”

Through the EYE which was hovering in the fronds of a tree, he watched the local messing with some sand while the Spy crouched beside him. After a while he understood what the man was doing. He was making an island. A particular island. Once again Worm thought about darting the woman, but he still wasn’t sure. It was better to wait until he was actually looking at Lylunda. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, so that island map could mean anything, and he’d already made too many wrong choices.

The Spy bowed and walked back to the lander. The local looked at the map, his face troubled, then he smeared it out with his foot and went the other way along the beach.

Uneasy, Worm called the EYE back, hoping he had time to reclaim it.

As he watched the lander shoot for the horizon, Worm swore and pushed the flikit after it. The flikit was a lot slower than a lander, so he didn’t dare go back to his ship or wait for the EYE to come home or even stop to scoop it up as he passed over it. In the time ’any of that would take, she could drop the loop on Lylunda and be on her way off planet.

There was enough fuel left in the zipper sled to take it around the world and back, so he set the call and concentrated in getting the most speed he could out of the flikit while keeping a wary eye on the screen, watching for any sign of the lander.

The chase seemed to go on forever across the mostly empty sea, though he overtook and left behind several large sailboats. Since the Spy had ignored them, he did also. He passed over several islands, most of them with locals doing this and that on the beaches and in the villages, ignored these.

Then he saw an island he recognized. The one the local had sculpted-and a good job it was, too. He’d got the coast just right, that spine of mountains like bony teeth, the thick jungle round the base of those teeth, the wide apron ’of pale yellow sand.

And belly down on that sand, the lander.

And a short distance off, two women talking.

He clicked the mufflers on, dipped to tree level, using the fronds as a sketch of a screen, cranked up the visuals, and focused on the women. Lylunda all right, looking angry, upset, sitting with a drum held between her hands, staring out at the sea as the Spy talked to her. He ground his teeth. If only he hadn’t deployed the EYE the last time, if he’d just kept it with him, he could listen to what they were saying. He could kill the Spy, stun Lylunda, and get off this stinking mudball. On the other hand, they could be talking local jabber. Be just his luck…

Cutter in one hand, Worm began easing closer, keeping as low as possible, the fronds of the treetops brushing against the side of the flikit as he crept past them. He had to be careful; he didn’t want the Spy sheltering herself behind Lylunda. The closer he could get before she noticed him, the less chance she’d have to think up something nasty.

The Spy turned and began trotting toward the lander. She was inside before Worm had time to react; she fired up the lifters and took off.

She was leaving. She had the woman and she let her go and now she was gone. All he could think of was that Lylunda had given her the information the Kliu wanted, so the Spy didn’t have to take the trouble to carry her off.

Sick with anger, Worm brought the flikit down on the sand, piled out of it, and ran to Lylunda. He jerked her to her feet, started shaking her. “What did you tell her? What? Tell me what you told her.” He coughed, saw flecks of red splatter her face, but that didn’t matter. He shook her some more, not giving her a chance to answer him, shouting the same questions over and and over.

She broke his hold with an ease that surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to be that strong.

“Worm. Sit down. Just sit down.” Her voice was soothing and it only increased his rage. He reached for her again, but she stepped between his arms, slapped her open hands against his shoulders and a moment later he was flat on his back staring up at the sky, wondering what had happened.

She knelt beside him, a sadness in her eyes that he hadn’t expected. “That you’re here tells me why you’re here,” she said.

It took him a while to sort out the sense of that. She waited for him to understand, then she went on, “If you keep being angry at me and trying to hurt me, I can’t help you.”

“What?” His throat was raw and trying to talk made his head dizzy. “Help me?”

“Didn’t your keph warn you?” She helped him sit up. He couldn’t believe how weak he was, how suddenly that weakness had flooded through him. “This is a deadly world if you don’t know how to cope with it.”

“Help me on my feet. I have to get back to my ship. There’s an ottodoc in it…”

“That won’t work, you know. You should let me take you into the village.”

“No! The flikit. I got to get back to my ship.”

“All right. If that’s what you want. Take my hand.” She pulled him up, set his arm about her shoulders and helped him stagger over to the flikit.

When they reached it, he grabbed onto her wrist and with remnants of his strength, fueled by desperation, he tried to pull her into the flikit.

She wrenched her arm free, slapped at his hand when he reached for her again. “If you managed to get me in there, we’d both be dead before we left the ground.”

“What? What are you talking about?” He barely got the words out before a fit off coughing seized him and nearly turned him inside out. “What… what what’s happening…

“Be quiet. It’s the only chance. Be qui…”

The darkness closed round him, cutting off her words.