Doomstar

17

The boat had at its forepost a lantern with a crack in it. Otherwise he might never have seen it until too late. There were many boats, coming, going, drifting, with sounds of music and laughter coming softly through their curtains. The music was sweet and haunting in the extreme, and it set his nerves on edge. The crack in the lantern was a thin one, shaped roughly like an old long S. It was in the colored outer shell, so that the cold light sphere inside showed a bright white thread against the soft green. He saw it once shortly after they started. He saw it again after the first branching, and yet again after the second.

From that time on he watched it.

It was perfectly possible that someone else was bound for the same destination. The Market never closed, and many outworlders preferred to do business at night because of the daytime heat. There were also an infinite number of destinations along the way. But he remembered the white rabbit man with the coyote eyes, and he wondered if there had not been a call to somebody about the Earthman with the big gray Tchell who came asking for Starbird.

They entered a long stretch where there chanced to be no other boats at the moment, and suddenly the green lantern put on speed and began to close.

An Achernan voice, speaking Achernan, hailed Kettrick's boatman, and he slowed to answer. The green lantern slid closer and a tall Achernan in a pale cloak appeared, standing by the forepost. He talked to the boatman, reaching out to grasp the sternpost of Kettrick's boat.

Kettrick came out of the house, moving very fast. He hit the boatman. The boatman flung up his arms and fell toward the bow of the other boat, catching at the outstretched arm of the Achernan in the pale cloak. They fell together into the water. Kettrick pushed the motor control to its highest notch. The boat sped away with what seemed like agonizing slowness. Looking back, he saw four Achernans in the boat with the green lantern, two looking after him while the other two worked to pull their comrade out of the water. They cuffed the boatman away and he began to swim toward the bank. In a minute they were coming on again, coming fast.

The canal stretched ahead of Kettrick, a darkly gleaming road down which he moved with the silence of a dream. The great buildings rose on either side, their windows full of enigmatic lights. The boat came on behind him.

And there was no escape.

"Very well," thought Kettrick. "Then I will fight." He called to Chai to be ready, and swung the boat around.

For a moment or two the Achernans did not seem to understand what he was doing. The prow of his boat leaped at them, drawing a long V of ripples across the quiet water behind it. They seemed to think that he was trying to break past them, and they swerved as though to bar his way, and he laughed and braced himself and rammed into them at full speed.

In the light of his own forepost lantern he saw their startled angry faces, the black eyes with the faint stripes at the corners, the narrow supercilious heads. Then the heads and faces bounced wildly about and the lantern went out with a thin shattering crash. Kettrick bent double over his own knees, sliding forward. There were splashing noises, and cries, and wooden sounds of breaking. Kettrick threw the motor into reverse.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the boat wrenched and shook itself and backed away. The other one was settling fast and the Achernans were all in the water, either thrown there by the impact or caught by the quick subsidence. Kettrick continued to run backward away from them.

Chai came back to him. "Water come in front, John-nee."

"I'm not surprised."

"No fight."

"Don't worry, Chai. The night is still young."

He looked for a place to stop. There were landings and water stairs by every building, only these were too brightly illuminated to suit him. However, there was nothing in between, and he could not continue this sternwise flight forever. His own boat was filling, the forepost sinking visibly. He bowed to the inevitable and pulled in to the nearest landing.

They left the boat to do as she wished and went up the water stairs. The stone treads had been hollowed by a thousand generations of feet, and not one of them human. Or unhuman, depending on where you sat; Kettrick remembered a small lecture he had once given on Earth, roughly a million years ago before the Doomstar, to a girl who did not like people-sized things that talked. They all think of themselves as human, and us as not. The Achernan name for non-Achernans was "beast-born," which nicely covered all origins from ape to anything. So his feet were the interlopers, the unclean. He was glad he had Chai for company.

The building loomed massively above them. There were lights inside, and a long high hall of stone with a polished floor. This was a private landing and there was no way out of it to the public street except through the building.

They entered the hall. Even Chai's soft footsteps seemed to echo like thunder from the vault. Faces watched them, coldly smiling faces arched on slender necks, the necks poised on fluidly graceful bodies that seemed to coil upward along the spaced pillars. Kettrick felt extremely unwelcome. He had a sudden horror of being trapped in this hall, with the wet Achernans slithering out of the canal behind him and others in front, all enemies whether they served the Doomstar or not.

He began to run, with Chai loping beside him.

Just as they approached the outer entrance a couple came in, the man in a cloak of yellow silk, the woman in clinging white that emphasized her supple lines, her pale skin fired here and there with jewels. Her eye stripes were sharper, a brighter blue than the man's. The two froze staring as Kettrick and the big gray Tchell went past them. Kettrick heard their voices, in a manner remarkably human, begin to chatter in astonishment behind him. Then the night streets enfolded him and Chai and covered them, at least partially.

Kettrick slowed down to a fast walk. They seemed to have shaken the pursuit for a moment. How long that would last he didn't know. He felt the knife inside his tunic, to make sure it was still there. He paused a moment to get his bearings and continued on his interrupted way to the Market.

The Market could be heard long before it was seen. It had a busy sort of beehive sound, mingled with the lighter noises of a carnival. Guided by the sound, Kettrick came out of a quiet street onto the bank of the wide barge canal that brought the cargoes down from the spaceport, and the Market burst upon him from the other side.

It took up all the space on a good-sized island. There were closed storage sheds, and long open sheds for bartering, and all around the edges, like a wall against the ophidian world beyond, there were taverns and restaurants and sleeping units, all human. All the business done there was done by humans. The Achernans made their handsome profit simply by taxing the cargoes as they entered, as they changed hands, and as they left.

Kettrick crossed the nearest bridge over the canal. The brazen glare of the Market lights was harsh after the gentle lamps of Achern's streets. He loved them. He loved the loud, coarse voices of beast-born men arguing over the price of something. He loved their laughter. He even loved the smell of them, the acrid reek of humanity after a day of sweltering heat.

As he entered the covered walk around the Market it began to rain, a hard straight downpour that smoked off the shed roofs. Puddles appeared magically in the paving of crushed shell. Business continued uninterrupted, and in a matter of minutes the rain stopped and the puddles drained away. The night was only a little steamier than before.

Kittrick did not immediately see anyone he knew. He discovered that he was terribly hungry and badly in need of a drink. There was a tavern he had used to prefer, close to the southeast corner of the market. He cut across in a long diagonal between the sheds, where bales of goods from all over the Cluster were being opened and shaken out and touched and chaffered over and packed up again, flinging out a unique perfume of mingled scents on the heavy air, the exhalations of a hundred planets, enormously exciting. This was one part of Achern that Kettrick liked.

He passed one shed where the blue-skinned, white-crested men from a Hlakran ship were sweating bales off a loader, and he thought of Boker and Hurth and felt sick all over again. Then one of the men turned and saw him, stared, and shouted.

"Johnny! Johnny, am I seeing ghosts?"

"Clutha." Kettrick embraced him like a brother. The Hlakran was a friend of Boker's, a frequent visitor to his home in the Out-Quarter when he happened to be at Tananaru, and a cheerful pirate with whom Kettrick had gotten happily drunk on a dozen different worlds.

"But, man," Clutha asked him, "how does this happen? The last I heard…"

"I'll tell you about it over a drink."

Clutha glanced doubtfully at the bales. "Well…"

"Please," said Kettrick.

Clutha looked at him. Then he said something to the men and went with Kettrick.

The tavern was busy but not crowded. Kettrick found a place in a corner where they could talk.

And all of a sudden it was Old Home Week.

A small butterball man whose skin was pied black and white like a spaniel puppy came to take their order, looked twice at Kettrick, and let out a squeal of joy, bouncing on his short legs. "Johnny, Johnny! When did they let you back?"

His glad cry made the men at the nearest occupied table turn around, and one of them jumped up and came over. He was bald and lank, with huge pointed ears and a long face and a skin the color of a spanked baby. "Johnny," he said. "By all that's unholy."

A great horse-toothed grin split his face. He clapped Kettrick on the shoulder with one long arm and fetched the little pied man a swat on his rump with the other.

"Drinks are on me, Quip. Hello, Clutha. Where'd you find him, floating around somewhere in mid-space, poaching sunbeams? Does the I–C know you're back, Johnny?" Abruptly he turned and bawled to a man on the far side of the room. "Nedri! Come here, I've got a surprise."

The man rose and came over, carrying a drink in his hand. Kettrick watched him come. Nedri was a copper-haired, golden-skinned Darvan, and the last Kettrick knew about him he was skipper on one of the ships that he, Kettrick, had used to own in partnership with Seri Otku.

Old Home Week, for fair.

Nedri gave the glad cry, the crushing handshake, and they seemed as genuine as the others. But now Kettrick was feeling brittle and edgy, and hating it, because they were all his friends.

Well, that was what he had come to the Market for, to meet friends and talk. Might as well jump in with both feet and get it over with. The time, he thought, will not be long.

The little pied man brought a tray of drinks and put them down. "You can all pay," he said to the others. "This is on the house, for Johnny." He pulled a nearly full bottle of good Terran bourbon out of his tunic and banged it down in front of Kettrick.

Kettrick said, meaning it, "I have never seen anything so beautiful, Quip. And I am going to drink a great deal of it. So if you can dig me up a good thick Terran steak, or the equivalent thereof, to serve as blotting paper…"

"Oh, yes," said Quip. "I know what you like."

"And the same for my friend here, but heavy on the meat." He turned to Chai, who had sat down beside his chair. In her own tongue he said, "Look at me and say no names. Did this man come often to the house where you used to live?"

She knew perfectly well which man he meant. "No. Once, twice. Long time ago. Then never."

Kettrick nodded and turned again to Quip. "And she'd like a pitcher of water. She's too smart to drink the stuff we do."

Quip bounced away. Nedri was looking hard at Chai.

"Is that one of Seri's?"

"No," said Kettrick. "Why?"

"I remember he had a pair of them, that's all."

"How is Seri?"

Nedri shrugged. "Haven't seen him to speak to for almost two years. He fired me, not long after you left." He added cheerfully, "I've managed to live without him."

"Seri Otku?" said Clutha. "Hell, he was here just a few days ago, in the Market. Had to put his ship in repair and decided to sell off his cargo."

"I'd like to see him," Kettrick said. "Do you know where he's staying?"

Clutha grunted. "He didn't exactly tell me, Johnny. I'd met him a few times at Ree Darva, you remember, when Boker was with you, so I said hello, and he like to froze me in my tracks. Seemed he just didn't want to be bothered with old acquaintances."

"Not only Seri," the Darvan said. "The whole damn crew. The engineer in Starbird used to be with me. Used to be a nice guy. I went over to say hello too, after they went into repair. Thought we could have a few drinks together, a night on the town, like old times. He wasn't interested. Definitely." Nedri shook his head. "It all changed after you left, Johnny. I'd have quit anyhow. Seri began bringing in new people, people I didn't like, and then he took to shipping out himself and leaving the main office to somebody else to run, and I didn't like those people either."

"Well, the hell with Seri," said the long-faced man, whose name was Enago. "I never met him and he doesn't sound like much. Let's talk about Johnny."

"Wait," said Kettrick. "Just a minute." He took a bit swallow of bourbon and the hot shock of it hitting his stomach seemed to trigger off something in his mind. A thought that had lain dormant there banged suddenly into the open. "Nedri, what else beside Starbird was in the repair dock?"

Nedri frowned. "Oh, this and that. A couple of traders, the usual thing. Starbird was kind of off by herself, sitting one-two with a yacht, as though she was too snooty to associate with her own kind." Nedri grinned and held up his glass. "Excuse me for getting cute. This stuff always hits me on a hot day."

"A yacht?" said Kettrick.

"Yes." Nedri gave him an odd look. "Is this important?"

They were all looking at him now. Quip chose that moment to come with the food, bustling, chattering, so full of unaffected good nature that Kettrick could have strangled him. Finally he went away.

Kettrick said, "Let's get back to that yacht. Did you happen to notice…"

"I always notice a beautiful ship, Johnny. Fact, I walked around her to admire her from all sides. She was the Silverwing. Belongs to the curodai of Achern, what's his name…?"

"Ssessorn," said Clutha, imitating the soft sibilants of Achernan speech. "What's the matter, Johnny? You look kind of green."

"Nothing," said Kettrick. "Not a thing." He ate mechanically, because in spite of everything he was hungry as a wolf.The curodai of Achern. Not the head of the local government, but close to it, and about fourth in the government of Kirnanoc. Sssessorn, a powerful and important man, whose private space yacht happened to be in the repair dock at the same time as Starbird, and side by side.

"Hey," said Enago, "this party's gone sour. I think our Johnny has got troubles."

"Well, I knew that from the beginning," said Clutha, "I've just been waiting for him to open up."

They sat, letting him take his own time, drinking quietly.

Kettrick washed the last of his dinner down with some of the bourbon. He felt better now, well able to march to his execution.

"We landed Grellah this afternoon. Boker, Hurth, Glevan…and us, not listed. The spaceport guards arrested Boker, Hurth, and Glevan."

Clutha leaned forward. "Why?"

"Because Boker asked about Starbird" Kettrick rose abruptly. "I've got to call the I–C."

"But Johnny…"

"Later." He went to the opposite side of the room, where the plastic bubble of the communicator booth shone dimly at the end of the bar. "The curodai of Achern," he thought. "That tears it. They won't dare touch the damned yacht because if they're wrong…"

Oh yes they would, because what would happen if they were wrong was nothing at all compared to what would happen if they were right.

The one who would really suffer was Johnny Kettrick, if he had guessed wrong.

But if he were wrong, and Silverwing did not carry the Doomstar, then it wouldn't matter, because then certainly the Doomstar would shine, and nothing would matter any more. Nothing, at least, as small as the affairs of one man.

He opened the plastic bubble and was about to step inside when Chai grunted behind him and he turned around and saw five Achernans in wrinkled cloaks and damp tunics come in the front door, accompanied by three more Achernans in the black-and-gold tunics and polished helmets of the police.