The January Dancer

Goltraí: The Leaving that’s Grieving

The Fudir became a momentary folk hero on New Eireann, the scarred man says…

…when the word went about that he wanted to go to the Hadramoo. Everyone assumed that it was to take revenge on the rievers, and while they thought it a mad idea, both madness and revenge are well thought of on New Eireann and they applauded the sentiment. It never occurred to anyone other than Hugh—and maybe January—that he might have any other motive, for people engulfed by their own tragedies presume that others are too, or ought to be.

But reaching the Hadramoo required first leaving New Eireann, and this was proving remarkably difficult.

The rievers had systematically destroyed the alfvens on every interstellar ship in or around Port Eireann, so the only vessel presently capable of leaving the system was January’s New Angeles. Other ships would eventually appear—ICC freighters to service the orbital factories, tourist cruises to enthuse over the molten geysers—but none were expected soon. Cerenkov wakes had been detected out beyond the coopers, but they had been bound elsewhere and slid smoothly past New Eireann on the Grand Trunk Road, oblivious to the disaster below.

January’s New Angeles could carry twenty people in reasonable comfort, and perhaps another ten or so in reasonable discomfort. Beyond that, as he smilingly put it, he’d arrive at Jehovah with a ship full of corpses. That was a great many fewer berths than there were people clamoring to have them, so naturally the prices rose. Most of those wanting off New Eireann were technicians and managers who had been working the orbital factories—those who had not been aboard them when the Cynthians struck. More than one such, asked to pay his passage out-system, denounced January as a “profiteer,” by which they meant that they should be able to escape at his expense.

But New Angeles was not, as January pointed out, a subsidized charity, nor had he the deep pockets of the ICC or, indeed, of their own corporations. He had expenses to meet—fuel, port fees, rations, and supplies. The Laser Lift was out of commission, and he would have to boost into orbit by rockets alone. That required disposable boosters, also expensive. He took promissory notes in Gladiola Bills drawn on their employers—and redeemed those chits as soon as he could, exchanging them at a discount with Port Eireann for fuel and with local merchants for the food, drink, and air he would need to keep his passengers alive during the transit. The Port Authority and the merchants assumed the risk because Gladiola Bills were hard currency, and the sooner January reached Port Jehovah, the sooner word of the catastrophe could be spread and help summoned.

The Fudir found January in the freighter’s control room, reviewing readiness reports with Hogan, Barnes, and Tirasi. The captain welcomed him with his usual rosy-cheeked smile and told him to go fuck himself.

“I’m not asking for one of the passenger berths,” the Fudir explained. “I’ll ship as an instrument tech. You still need one.”

“Do I, now?” January remarked, as if in surprise. “Bill, do I need an instrument tech?”

Tirasi looked up from the screen he had been checking, glanced briefly at the Fudir. “Not while I’m aboard.”

January smiled at the Fudir. “Port Eireann tells me, because I’m running an ‘errand of mercy,’ they won’t insist on a full crew—not that they ever were sticklers like Port Jehovah.”

“With me along, you won’t have to work watch-and-watch,” the Fudir pointed out.

Without looking up from her console, Maggie B. said, “We’ll manage.”

“Beside,” said January, “your certificate reads ‘Kalim DeMorsey of Bellefontaine,’ and if I’ve learned nothing else since landing here, it’s that whoever else you might be, you’re not him.” He picked up a thinscreen and began checking preflight items against his database.

“The name was a convenience,” the Fudir admitted, “but the qualifications were real.”

January glanced at him. “Were they. How do I know? Your word?” His tone implied what that word was worth.

“No, my work. On the trip out here.”

But the captain shook his head. “If I took you on knowing your certificate was false, I could lose my own license. Hogan, have Chaurasia’s technicians finished the quality check on our alfvens?”

“Not yet, Chief.”

“Remind them they’re under warranty from Gladiola yards. I know it wasn’t ICC’s fault that New Eireann’s magnetic cushions were off-line, but I only want to know if my alfvens are still up to Yard specs after that emergency brake.”

“Can you take me as a passenger, then?”

January seemed surprised to find the Fudir still in the control room. “A passenger? If you have the fare, I can put you on the waiting list. At number…”

“Fifty-seven,” said Maggie B. “We can fit him into our third trip; but another ship will probably come along before then.”

“You can have my wages back from the outbound voyage. I can pay you the rest when I get to Jehovah.”

Maggie B. said, “You shore seem dang eager to run out on your buddy.”

January shook his head. “Sorry. No money, no ticket.”

“How am I supposed to get off this place, then?”

January grunted and frowned over his checklist, running his finger down the screen. He showed it to Tirasi. “You see there anything about helping an imposter and petty crook back to Jehovah?” Tirasi shook his head. “No sir, I surely do not.” So January shrugged and pointed, as if helpless, to the checklist. “Sorry, it’s not my problem. Look, ‘Fudir,’ you and that ‘Ringbao’—that O’Carroll—tricked your way on board my ship to come here and start that bloody civil war up again. I don’t like being tricked and I don’t like being used.” He slapped the thinscreen checklist on his console. “Now, leave my ship before I call up Slugger.”

The Fudir complained of this later in the office Hugh had appropriated in Cargo House. “He was playing with me. It’s that eternal smile of his. He makes you think he’s in on it, that he’s on your side. Then—wham—he blindsides you.”

Hugh made no reply and did not even look up from the reports he was reading until the glaziers at work on the window began to put their equipment away. “Finished?” he asked them.

The senior glazier tugged his forelock. “That we are, O’Carroll. And bulletproof, too.” A knuckle tap on the pane demonstrated this property. “No one’ll be pot-shotting yer honor; not through this here window.”

Hugh thanked the men and they left, and he stood and walked to the window, where he gazed down on the carpark, from which the wrecked vehicles had already been cleared. A bicyclist appeared, racked his bike in a row of other requisitioned bikes, and ran into the building. Another messenger, another report. Hugh hoped it was for one of the other ministers on the United Front.

Farther off, in New Down Town, repair parties were razing unstable structures with wrecking balls and dozers. While he watched, the Fermoy Hotel fell in on itself, raising a cloud of debris, gray and white and black, that seemed for a moment a smoky outline of the building itself, as if its ghost had survived the building’s demise. That’s where the gardy first raised the Loyalist flag, he thought. Work gangs spread out and began hauling the debris into wagons, some horse-drawn, others motor vehicles brought up from the relatively unscathed south. From this distance, the work gang looked like children at play.

“It’s good to know,” the Fudir said, “that when someone does pot-shot you, it will be through another window entirely.”

Hugh turned from his melancholy survey to face the man who had brought him back to this. “You think January was putting on a happy face to fool you? I’d not expect you to complain of deception.”

“I’m a ‘scrambler.’ Deception’s what I do. January’s supposed to be ‘on the square.’” The Fudir joined him by the window. “I didn’t think there was an unbroken pane of glass in all New Eireann.”

“They came up from the Mid-Vale,” Hugh explained, missing the humor. “Handsome Jack organized the plants down there that make the crystal tourist souvenirs to switch to window glass. There’s a plastic plant in County Ardow doing the same.” He rapped the new window with a knuckle. “Maybe this should have been plastic. But Jack and I agreed it was important that I do business with Mid-Vale suppliers, not only with the Loyalists in the Ardow.”

“Politics,” said the Fudir.

Hugh shrugged. “You say that like a dirty word. But—cut deals or cut throats. Your pick.” He crossed his arms. “Who’s on my list today?”

The Fudir had appointed himself the task of separating from the chaff of those eager to meet with Hugh the wheat of those who actually needed to. It was not a very arduous duty—it consisted mostly of telling people “no” without obviously telling them “no”—and if the Fudir was practiced at any one thing, it was at not being obvious. The work would keep him busy while he awaited a ship. He opened his notebook and toggled the calendar with his stylus. “Kiernan Sionnach, from the Reek Guides, is your ten o’clock. He wants to know how you plan to rebuild the tourist trade.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, I think people have no sense of priorities.”

“It’s that politics thing, again,” Hugh told him.

The window shook to a dull thud and both men looked up. Over Lower Newbridge Street, on the far side of town, a plume of smoke rose. Hugh sighed. “Another fine old building down.”

But the Fudir frowned and shook his head. He laid his notebook on Hugh’s desk and came to the window. “No. No, that was a bomb.” Even as he spoke, the banshee wail of distant sirens arose and the gang dismantling the Down Hotel paused in their work and looked off to the west.

“A bomb…?” Hugh said. “But…Who…? Why…?”

The Fudir crossed his arms and studied the ragged cityscape at the base of the hill. “There is a Terran saying attributed to the Auld Deceiver. ‘Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.’ Some people”—and he pointed with a toss of his head toward the black plume that now curled in the distance—“will first create the Hell over which they mean to rule.”

That evening, a space yacht entered the Eireannaughta system out of Port Jehovah. That meant a few more berths for refugees, and the Fudir was determined to secure at least one of those berths for himself. So a few days later, when the yacht had reached Low Eireann Orbit, the Fudir took a bicycle from the rack in front of Cargo House and pedaled down to the Port. Others on the street, assuming he was on some errand for Little Hugh—by now his close association with the Ghost of Ardow was common knowledge—made way for him. A few waved, and one wag shouted, “On to the Hadramoo!”

At the Passenger Terminal, he found several score out-system techs mobbing the newly repaired terminal doors, crowding and shoving, and waiting for the yacht’s pilot to emerge. The Fudir continued around to the maintenance gate on the east side of the field. There, a large sign read ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE. WATCH YOUR STEP. He dismounted and chained the bicycle to the fence.

The Fudir exchanged friendly greetings with the watchman—he had made a practice of standing various low-level functionaries to their pints—and they discussed for a few minutes the latest lorry-bomb, which had demolished Handsome Jack’s party headquarters. “Ask me,” said the watchman, “that was Jack hisself done it. Settin’ up Little Hugh as the goat.” The man was a staunch Loyalist and when the Fudir pointed out that Hugh himself had given Jack quarters in Cargo House, answered, “The bitter to keep an oy an’ ’im.” The Fudir’s policy was never to argue with a man you’re going to ask for a favor, so he said that he had been sent to the Port to learn how many refugees the newcomer’s yacht could take.

The watchman did not ask to see an authorization. “She’s grounding in no more’n a dekaminute. Pilot-owner’s name…” He checked his manifest as he swung the gate open. “Ah, his name’s Qing Olafsson, sez here.”

The Fudir paused as he passed through the gate. “Qing Olafsson?”

“Aye. D’ye know him?” The guard seemed to think that all off-worlders knew one another.

The Fudir shook his head. “No.” But he frowned and fell into thought as he crossed the field to Inward Clearance.

A wooden bench had replaced the padded chairs in the waiting room at Inward Clearance and a clipboard with paper sheets had replaced the computer terminals on which tourists and businessmen had once registered their arrivals and departures. One smashed and blackened terminal bore a handwritten sign: OUT OF ORDER. The bench was empty and the Fudir set himself to await the pilot’s arrival.

Olafsson Qing. He didn’t believe in coincidence, bizarre or otherwise; not where that name was concerned. What business had They on a remote place like New Eireann? The Brotherhood should never have gotten mixed up with Them. The Great Game was best appreciated from a distance.

A slim, sallow-featured man was standing at the kiosk filling out the inbound forms. The Fudir, immersed in his thoughts, had not noticed him enter. Now he rose from the bench. “Slawncha,” he said, holding out a hand to Olafsson. “I’m from the ‘Welcome Wagon.’” That drew a blank look—or a blanker look: the Fudir had never seen such an unremarkable countenance. “I’ve come down from Cargo House. I suppose you’ve learned about our situation here while you crawled down from the exit ramp.”

“Yes,” said the other. “Terrible tragedy.”

The Fudir waited a moment for him to say something further, but Olafsson continued filling out the forms. If the name had suggested a possibility, the indifference confirmed it. Fellow feeling was not something looked for among Those of Name. It was a bad idea to bring oneself to their attention. Yet, the Fudir was in no position to be choosy about the rides he hitched.

“Then you ought to know we’ve got several hundred refugees who need a lift to Jehovah,” he said, “although they’d accept a lift to New Chennai or Hawthorn Rose, if you’re going that way.” Actually, there was only one refugee that concerned the Fudir, but if Olafsson wanted to take others, that was no matter. There was safety in numbers.

But Olafsson shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve very little room on board, and I’ve only come here to pick up a friend.” He had finished filling out his entry form and handed it to the clerk, who looked up startled from his damage lists and requisitions.

“Yer a quiet one,” he said, squinting at Olafsson. Then, noticing the Fudir also, he added, “Top ’o th’ morning there, Fudir.”

“And the rest o’ th’ day for yerself, Donal. This way,” he said to Olafsson. “I’ll take you out the back. The refugees outside the main terminal building will be all over you, begging for passage.” He thought if he gave Olafsson enough assistance, the man might feel more inclined to take him along as a favor. “Maybe I can help you find your friend.”

Olafsson glanced at the customs clerk, then at Fudir, and almost smiled.

They crossed town on foot, the streets being still too rubble-strewn for most vehicles. The Fudir walked his bicycle, explaining the delicate political situation, pointing out the progress already made. All this, the newcomer absorbed in unnerving silence. They had passed the shell of J. J. Brannon’s Mercantile Emporium before the man spoke.

“You said you were from Cargo House,” Olafsson said. “Do you work for the ICC?”

A peculiar and irrelevant question. “No, the United Front co-opted the building for its council. It was the only large structure still more or less intact. But the co-managers refuse to call it Council House. I’m taking you there to meet them.”

“Co-managers,” Olafsson repeated. “A tramp captain I passed coming in said there was a disputed leadership. Is this ‘United Front’ some temporary truce?”

“January’s a born pessimist. We’re hoping it proves more than that.”

The business district had been badly mauled by the Cynthians. Now jackhammers shook the pavement. Timbers crackled and broke and fell. Work gangs hauled debris away. Straw bosses hollered out directions. One man, apparently tired beyond endurance, covered with the gray dust of demolition, had sat himself down on the curbstones and was quietly weeping. His fellows continued to work around him, affecting to take no notice.

“By the gods,” Olafsson said after they had passed him by, “I could smash the bastards who did this.”

The Fudir turned and gave him a twisted grin. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The road turned right and climbed New Street Hill toward Cargo House. A young boy on a bicycle, with the plain green pennant of the Front snapping on an antenna behind his seat, came spinning down the hill crying, “Make way! Make way!” The Fudir and Olafsson stepped to the side of the road.

“They’re gaining some of their spirit back,” the Fudir said, watching the boy out of sight. “We arrived just after the raid, Hugh and I did. You should have seen these folk then. They’d had the sand kicked out of ’em. We barely missed it ourselves—the raid, I mean. They tell me an ICC courier boat did arrive right in the thick of it, the poor bastard.”

Olafsson said nothing, and the Fudir thought, You’re a stunning conversationalist. They walked together in silence until they came to a stretch of road just below Cargo House itself where there was no one about and no houses nearby. “So, who is this friend you’ve come to find?” the Fudir asked. “You can see things are all confused here, but the Housing Council may have some records of his whereabouts, if he’s still alive.”

“His name’s Donovan.”

The name was a blow in his stomach, but the Fudir did not allow it to show. “Donovan, is it?” he said breezily. “Can’t be more than a couple thousand people with that name on New Eireann.” There was still the possibility of coincidence. Somewhere in the Spiral Arm there must be ordinary men named Olafsson Qing who had ordinary friends named Donovan.

“This one lives on Jehovah.”

“Ah. Does he, now? Then, I hate to tell you, but you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

Olafsson shrugged. “I was given a channel by the Seven of Jehovah. Fudir, they said, and he has gone to New Eireann.”

“They said that, did they? Well, not so many go by that name,” the Fudir admitted. “All right. You want Donovan…What’s your business with him?”

“For him to know,” Olafsson said.

“He doesn’t like me to…”

“Those of Name greet you, Fudir.”

And there it was: the very thing he had dreaded since hearing the name of the arriving pilot. It was enough to make the Fudir believe in the gods, or at least in the crueler sort. He had been looking for a ship. Now a ship had come looking for him.

Be careful what you wish for.

“Why should they greet me? They know nothing of me. I don’t work for them.”

“From your lips to Donovan’s ear. That makes you a proper object of Their attention. Come. I need only a name, such a little thing. The next link in your chain to Donovan. That is all. You betray no one. You need not even leave this place.”

And what sort of assurance was that when leaving was the thing he desired most? But he looked off down the hillside to the wrecked city and listened for a moment to the sound of hammers and crashing masonry and wondered if that was true. Could he run out on Hugh in the midst of all this? For the first time in many years he was party to something worth doing and the problem was that it clashed with something else more worth doing. He had to follow the Twister, even if it meant running out on New Eireann. What was one man less in the Reconstruction?

He rested his body against the bicycle, gazing on nothing in particular. He thought of the intricate quadrille now taking place on New Eireann. Handsome Jack. Little Hugh. Voldemar and the Direct Action Faction. Now, Those of Name. The betrayals would have to be set up very carefully.

“The name?” suggested Olafsson with an air of tried patience.

The Fudir sighed. “I can’t give you her name.”

“I am grieved to hear it.”

“Save your tears. I mean I can’t give you her name. Donovan set things up so that if the wrong person makes contact, the chain breaks apart. They disappear into the Corner, and you’ll never find them. Try it, and you end up in the lime pits on Dunkle Street.”

“Then, you have a problem. I need Donovan, and that apparently means I need you on Jehovah to vouch for me. I’d rather not disrupt matters here, but shall I tell The Names you refused? There are other agents at large, this side of the Rift. They might be given other assignments.”

The Fudir recalled that couriers were often sent out in pairs. He screwed up his mouth. “Like assassinating reluctant Terrans?”

Olafsson did not deny it.

Another messenger bike passed, this one pedaling uphill. The girl raised a fist and squeaked, “On to the Hadramoo!”

Olafsson raised an eyebrow after she had passed. “Surely, the Eireannaughta are not contemplating a reprisal against the Cynthians!”

But the Fudir didn’t answer. Suddenly, he smiled. “You’ll have to arrest me, Br’er Fox,” he said.

“What?”

“Can you pretend to be a Jehovan proctor?”

Olafsson waved a hand. His pretenses ran wider and deeper than that. “Why?”

“No, make that a League marshal. Then they can’t refuse extradition. Give me one day to make some arrangements here, then serve me with a writ. I’ll give you the details later tonight.”

“That seems a bit elaborate; or do you deceive as a habit?”

The Fudir closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t want people here to think I’ve run out on Little Hugh.”

“Why should you care what other people think when the Secret Name calls you?”

“Indulge me. You’re getting what you want. Only don’t tell Hugh until you actually ‘arrest’ me. He may try to stop you.”

“He may try.”

“Don’t underestimate the Ghost of Ardow.”

All that evening, as he met with the people he needed to meet with and made the arrangements he needed to arrange, the Fudir weighed the ulta-pulta, the yin and yang, the drivers and constraints.

On the plus side, he could leave New Eireann now, and resume his chase of the Dancer. On the minus side, he must go in the company of a dangerous man who expected a service that the Fudir was disinclined to render. There was something about the courier that was not right. Like a cracked bell, the tone was a little off. Something he had said…The Fudir did not know what it was; nor was he especially eager to learn. The greater a man’s knowledge, the shorter his life.

He didn’t care what the “Hombres con Nombres” wanted of Donovan. It was a distraction from the Dancer, and he cursed Donovan for ever joining the Great Game. Over the years, as no assignments came, Donovan had gradually come to believe that They had forgotten him. He had pursued other avocations, and found them quite fulfilling. Had Those of Name somehow discovered his abdication? Was the courier in fact an assassin?

A bad thing, then, to lead such a man to Donovan. Yet, the Fudir couldn’t very well refuse a direct summons. And Olafsson might be no more than he appeared—an ordinary courier with an ordinary message, requiring Donovan only to pluck some particular fruit from the tree of knowledge.

A man could live most of his life forgetting the Confederation or the League existed at all. Life’s real problems ran far below that august level, but League and Confederation ground like millstones along the Rift; and now something of that abrasive emptiness had drifted down Electric Avenue and touched him. An ancient Terran god had once said, “You may forget about politics; but politics will not forget about you.”

Yet the Fudir knew that he must follow the Dancer into the Hadramoo. As stolid and remorseless as were the oppressions of Dao Chetty, the wild cruelties of the barbarians of the Cynthian Cluster were worse. The Dancer might be no more than myth; but if there were the slightest chance that the old legends were true—and the experiences of January and Jumdar hinted that they might be—then at the least he owed it to the Spiral Arm to attempt recovery before the Cynthians discovered its powers.

Not that the Spiral Arm would ever thank him.

The next day, Olafsson strode into Hugh’s office wearing what seemed very much like the undress uniform of a Hound’s Pup and waving papers of official appearance “demanding and requiring” the person of one Kalim DeMorsey, d.b.a. “The Fudir.”

Hugh was by turns startled by the intrusion, intent on the warrant, angry, saddened, and finally resigned. “It seems your sins have found you out,” he told the Fudir. Then, laying the extradition papers on his desk, he addressed Olafsson. “These seem to be in order, but I would like to enter a protest—”

“So noted,” Olafsson snapped, but then added more softly, “Don’t concern yourself, PM. We’ll send him back when we’re done with him. He’s a material witness, not a suspect.”

The Fudir hadn’t really expected the courier to follow through on that particular touch, and was pleased that he had. It would reflect badly on Hugh if he had been friends with a wanted felon. Of course, the Fudir was a wanted felon, but perceptions matter. So “material witness” was a small kindness wrapped in a greater cruelty. The Fudir would not meet Hugh’s eyes, and hung his head as if in shame.

Olafsson took him by the arm. “Come along,” he said. “There’s a good fellow. No need for the shackles.”

The Fudir turned to Hugh and said, “Just remember when you first met old Kalim DeMorsey.”

Hugh nodded and said, “Amir Naith’s Gulli. I owe you my life.”

Olafsson did not handle him roughly, but did keep a firm grip on his arm as he guided the Fudir down the hallway. Handsome Jack Garrity came out of his office as they passed. The Fudir nodded infinitesimally to him, and Handsome Jack returned the gesture, and the Fudir continued under Olafsson’s guidance, satisfied with this microscopic farewell.

Olafsson’s yacht had carried a light ground car that could ride on surface effect, magnetic tramline, or inflated wheels, as circumstances required. Granted, it was not much of a vehicle. Made of “solid smoke” for lightness and jointed to fold compactly, it nevertheless worried the Fudir when he saw it. Confederate couriers normally traveled lean and swift; stealth was more their mode. Had Olafsson stolen a ship from someone else? And if so, what had he done with the owner?

The streets were encumbered with construction materials and demolition debris, around which Olafsson wove with patient skill. At the intersection of Port and MacDonald, one of the new gardies halted them for a time while he waved a debris lorry backward into the lot where a row of shops were coming down. The site contractor saw the Fudir and came over to the ’buggi waving a paper. “Tell Hugh,” he said, “that the composites haven’t come up yet from Fermoy for the Jackson Street reconstruction.” The Fudir smiled and said he would.

Olafsson made no comment until the gardy had waved them through and they turned onto Port Road. “When did you plan to tell him?” was all he asked.

On the spaceport hard, the Fudir stood by Olafsson’s yacht while the robot hoist folded the dũbuggi and raised it into the cargo hold, and the boarding stairs deployed from amidships. The Fudir chafed at the speed of it all, and glanced repeatedly toward the maintenance gate, through the maze of wrecked shuttles and lighters and bumboats that the Cynthians left behind. He was anxious to leave, but the timing had to be right.

“Expecting someone?” Olafsson asked. He had been watching the hoist keenly, but the Fudir was not surprised to find him aware of the goings-on about him.

“I thought it might rain,” he said, indicating dark red clouds gathering above the distant Reeks. The hot, violent updrafts on the other side sometimes created rains of gray ash over the Vale. Olafsson spared them only a glance.

“We’ll be gone before then. It’s the bicyclist that bothers me.”

“Bicyclist…”

“It’s your friend,” Olafsson said a moment later as the approaching figure rounded a blasted ICC packet. “I hope he doesn’t intend to prevent your leaving.” He surreptitiously loosened the flap on one of his pockets.

The bike that O’Carroll had taken was too small for his frame and he appeared almost comical, an awkward set of pumping knees, as he rode between two shattered corporate shuttles.

“Climb the stairs, Fudir,” said Olafsson, stepping between him and Hugh.

“That would be rude,” the Fudir answered. “I think he’s come to say good-bye.”

Olafsson grunted, but made no response.

Hugh turned his bike into a tight circle and skidded to a stop just in front of them. Letting the bike fall to the ground, he strode up to the departing pair. “I finally remembered,” he said, pointing a finger at the Fudir, “when I first met ‘Kalim DeMorsey,’ and I’m after wondering how this spalpeen knew of that name at all.”

Olafsson may have been expecting a great many things, but this was not among them, and he turned to give the Fudir a puzzled look, for the Fudir had given him that very name to use on the warrant.

The courier had not shown many lapses of attention in the short time the Fudir had known him, but this one was all that Little Hugh needed. He tackled Olafsson around the chest, pinning his arms to his side and knocking the man to the ground. The Fudir was impressed. Hugh had to believe he was fighting a Hound’s Pup; and that meant he had tossed both legal and physical prudence to the winds.

Olafsson appeared to no more than shrug and Hugh was thrown aside. Hugh rolled and rose—and Olafsson already had a weapon in his hand.

“Don’t shoot!” the Fudir cried.

Olafsson cocked his head, but this time he did not take his eyes off the O’Carroll. “I didn’t think there were more than five men alive who could have done what you did, and four of them are…I’m sorry, PM, but your friend really is urgently needed on Jehovah. Now, I’d suggest leaving as quickly as you came.”

“Sahbs,” said the Fudir. “Company.”

A band of armed toughs had emerged from the two wrecked company shuttles and advanced now on the three men standing at the base of the yacht. At their head strode Voldemar O’Rahilly wearing a sleeveless vest and bearing the sweep-gun he’d been given by the ICC during the Cynthian raid. Hugh, unarmed, turned to face them.

The Direct Action fighters leveled their weapons; but O’Rahilly raised his left arm and patted them down. “There’s no need for blood this day, boyos,” he said. “Hugh and I, we’ve spilt too much blood together for me to be happy spilling his.” Then, to Hugh, “But it seems to me only fair that if you arrived here with the Terran, you should leave with him as well.” His bearded lips split into a red grin. “Symmetry’s appealing, ain’t it?”

“But the Cause…” Hugh protested.

“Will carry on widdout yez; as we did durin’ yer exile. Come on, now, the both of ye, be boardin’ the yacht.”

The both of ye? The Fudir looked for Olafsson and saw him nowhere. Had he managed to slip unseen into his ship? But no, he spied the courier now, in the midst of Voldemar’s men. And with a weapon in either hand.

The Fudir wasn’t sure he liked the odds on that; but neither was he sure which way the odds broke. “Hugh, better do as he says.”

The O’Carroll raised a chin. “And if I don’t?”

“I said I wouldn’t be happy wid it,” Voldemar answered. “Never said I wouldn’t do it.” And with that, he aimed his sweeper directly at the Fudir.

As a way of not shedding O’Carroll blood, it was ingenious; but the Fudir wished O’Rahilly had picked some other way.

But Voldemar hesitated and the Fudir realized that Olafsson was now standing directly behind him and one of his weapons was shoved against Voldemar’s spine. “I’d really rather you not damage my goods,” the courier told the faction leader.

The Fudir saw a cloud of doubt pass across Voldemar’s face and the two of them locked gazes for a moment. Then Voldemar shrugged. “What we got here,” he said, “is what yez’d call a ‘conundrum.’ Ye can kill me, for sure—no boyos, hold off for just a wee bit and we’ll see if we can’t untie this widdout we all get burned, especially me. Ye can kill me, Pup; but ye’ll only do it if I actually do damage to yer goods, so to speak. I gotta shoot first, right? It’s what ye call a ‘code of honor’ or something. Now you wouldn’t like that, and I wouldn’t like that, and for sure old Fudir here wouldn’t like that. So let’s try something we can all like. All I’m askin’ ye to do is take one more passenger. That’s all. I mean, by the gods, man! Think of the mess we’d be after layvin’ here for the maintenance crew!”

“I won’t have it be said,” Hugh announced, “that I ran out on my people.”

“Oh, don’t ye worry none about that. When the guard at the gate finally gets hisself untied, he’ll let everyone know it was a shanghai job—by Jack’s Rebels! Man, you’re a legend—and I need that legend—but I don’t need you. Fact is, yez’ve gone soft. Cozyin’ up an’ makin’ dayls wid Handsome Jack an’ all. That ain’t fookin’ right. Yez’re a traitor to the O’Carroll.”

“To myself, ye mean?” Hugh said bitterly. Then he jerked when he felt Olafsson’s weapon pressed to his side.

“I am persuaded by the man’s rhetoric,” the courier said. “Also, I have counted his guns; and while there might be a certain philosophical satisfaction in letting things play out, I really do need to take the Fudir back unharmed to Jehovah. If your presence is the price, so be it.”

Hugh’s shoulders slumped. “If I’d brought my bodyguards with me,” he said.

“There would have been a bloodbath for sure,” the Fudir said. He had already taken two steps up the stairs. “Count your blessings. And mine.”

Shoulders slumped, Hugh followed him up the stairs with Olafsson directly behind him. At the head of the stairs, and just before closing the airlock, the courier turned and faced the faction fighters. “I’m not sure how wide the blast circle is for these strap-on boosters, but I’ll be lighting off directly.”

The Fudir saw Voldemar and his men scrambling for the edge of the field before the lock had fully closed.

“I’ll be back!” Hugh shouted through the closing crack. “I’ll be back,” he said again, after it had closed. And then, in a piteous voice, he added, “Oh, my poor world! My poor world!”