The January Dancer

Goltraí: Howling, In the Wilderness

Old ’Saken! the scarred man says. The very name is magic. Here was the world at the end of the ancient Via Dolorosa, where the bewildered detritus of Terra was cast off to live or die as best they could in the collapse of the Commonwealth of Suns. In the tumultuous and despairing first generation, the ultimate decision had been to live, and that had resulted in a certain lack of sentimentality. “Whatever it takes” was the motto of the first dynasty of presidents. In her long history, ’Saken’s refugee camps came under rough bosses, gave way to city-states, then organized in leagues and empires and shattered in civil wars. Her rough-and-tumble traditions linger in her civic religion, but the bond of fractious solidarity that arose among the exiles resulted finally in the largest world with a single planetary government. The Forsaken, as they call themselves, have a motto: “I against my brother; my brother and I against our cousin; my cousin and I against the world.”

Other worlds were settled by successive waves of deportees: Waius, Damtwell, Die Bold, Bandonope, and the rest, and some prospered (like Friesing’s World) and some did not (like the derelict worlds of the Yung-lo), but ’Saken always held to pride of place. That their ancestors had been the first deported argued that they had been especially important in the old Commonwealth. At least, the Forsaken argued so. If Jehovah is unworldly and Peacock indolent, if Die Bold suffers ennui and New Eireann desperation, a certain whiff of satisfaction, of even arrogance, has settled over Old ’Saken. In the heart of every Forsaken man and woman rests the suspicion that they were just the least bit better than those upstarts on Die Bold or Friesing’s World.

All of which could be very problematical when it came to tourism.

People across the Spiral Arm came to visit Old ’Saken. Obstreperous boozhies from the Greater Hanse; pesky Megranomers and their peskier children; Chettinads in their ridiculous garb; yokels from Jehovah; rubes from Gatmander; even jump-up so-called royalty from the so-called capital world of High Tara. They all wanted to see the First Field, where the landings had been, and other sites associated with the early days: Kong Town, Elsbet Bay, Raging Rock.

So there was a great deal of traffic on the Piccadilly Circus and it was not impossible, nor even very unlikely, that a trader or tourist chance-met on Die Bold would show up also on Old ’Saken. So the posse would, Bridget ban insisted, maintain the same identities, just in case.

The transit took only a single day, but the traffic on the ramp was heavy and intricately choreographed by local STC. After that, the magbeam network caught the two ships and gentled them down toward the legendary world where the Human Diaspora had begun. During the crawl, Bridget ban and the Fudir studied maps of Chel’veckistad, searching out the best and most plausible routes from the spaceport to the Dalhousie Estate in the Northbound Hills where Lady Cargo lived. “She’ll have it with her in the estate,” Bridget ban had said. “Question is, do we enter the grounds openly or secretly?”

“Or both,” suggested the Terran.

Greystroke and Hugh in the other vessel had agreed. A Krinthic merchant prince might have probable cause for calling on the chairman of the ICC and just enough social standing to pull it off. Hugh was able, after some research, to craft a plausible RFP involving a shipment of crater gems for Dalhousie Dew. The latter was an especially fine touch, since the hybrid fruit grew only in the soil of the Northbound Hills under direct control of Lady Cargo’s estate. The pricing was inevitably months out-of-date, but the proposal would at least get them a hearing with the estate manager and the master vintner.

“She will almost surely try to influence the terms of the deal with the Dancer,” Greystroke said. “Ringbao will use Fudir’s plan and we’ll compare notes afterward.”

The Fudir had suggested aural implants that would block Cargo’s direct voice, while repeating the sense of the words via simulation. He called it the “Odysseus Strategy,” after an ancient Terran god. Hugh had thought of a number of other possibilities—the actual vibrations in the air might carry the effect, the sense of the words might carry the effect despite the buffer—but as no one could see a way around those objections, they had decided to go ahead with the plan.

“If ye agree to a muckle bad deal,” said Bridget ban, “we’ll know the buffers are no help.”

“What matters,” the Fudir interjected, “is to scout out the security inside the grounds. We need to know where she’s keeping it, and what we’ll have to bypass to get to it.”

“Teach a Peacock pleasure,” Greystroke retorted.

“I don’t know why ye bait him so much,” said Bridget ban after the connection was broken.

“Getting him to react is the only way I know he’s there,” the Fudir grumbled. “He’s my jailor, gods take him. How should I feel about him?”

“Enough o’ that, now,” said the Hound. “Let’s go over the topography again. There’s a ravine near the north end o’ the estate that might provide an entrance.”

They were a day out of High ’Saken Orbit when Bridget ban picked up a Hound’s beacon.

“Yes, Grey One,” Bridget ban told the Pup when he had called with the same information. “We’re hearing it, too. Yellow Code. A ship in parking orbit. Fudir’s trying for a visual right now. I think it must be Grimpen. He told us at Sapphire Point he was going to the Old Planets. Wait, here’s the image. Aye, that’s Grimpen’s ship, alright, the muckle great wean. No, no answer yet…Give it a minute for the time lag.”

“According to the intelligence,” said the Fudir, “the other ship’s intelligence is on standby. Answers politely, but won’t comment on the owner’s whereabouts. Won’t even acknowledge that Grimpen’s the owner.”

“No, it would nae do so…”

“Cu,” said Greystroke. “Grimpen must have gone planetside. Ask his ship when he’ll be back.”

“Nay, the Grimpen is senior tae me, and his ship’ll nae accept my override. Yes, Rollover? Yes, I’ll leave a message. Tell your master that Bridget ban and Greystroke want to meet with him. Greystroke, if Grimpen came directly here from Sapphire Point, he’s been here for a metric month. Unless he stopped at Abyalon, or took a side trip to the Cynthia Cluster.”

“Which means he’s on the scent of something.”

“He was on the scent of something when he left Sapphire Point. But not the Dancer.”

Early the next morning, the Fudir put Endeavour into High ’Saken Orbit not too far off the Chel’veckistad beanstalk. From parking orbit, they could see the two other beanstalks peeping over the horizon. Bridget ban admired the flame-red aspect of the distant Kikuyutown-Chadley Beanstalk, which was just catching the sunset. “They’ve been around a long time, the Old Planets have. Someday Jehovah, Peacock, and the rest will have them, too.”

“Old Earth,” said the Fudir, “had a dozen of them. They were like a wall around the world. Twelve-Gated Terra, she was called. People came from around the old Commonwealth just to see them from space. It’s said that Earth’s day was lengthened more than a minute by the conservation of angular momentum. No one knows how many tens of thousands died when the Dao Chettians scythed them down. Now your oldest planets have two or three apiece, and you think it’s a marvel of science.”

“It’s not science,” said Bridget ban. “It’s engineering. Ancient superstitions have nothing to do with beanstalks.”

“And where do you think those engineering formulas came from? Someone had to think them up in the first place, right?”

“Losh,” said Bridget ban, “I’ll ha’ nae religious arguments here.”

The posse contrived to meet as if by chance in the Great Green Square, where Congress Hall and the PM’s Residence were must-see attractions. Both had been built over the course of several generations in the early years of Chu State, although they served now for the planetary government. They featured the tall, ornamented towers of that age. Giant mosaics of colored tiles, cleverly laid to use the angle of view from street level, turned the sharp-slanted roofs into murals. One showed an eagle fighting a snake; another showed a horseman charging across a snow-draped plain. There were spots on the Great Green, marked by low, railed platforms, from which each mural appeared as three-dimensional. Admission was monitored by a sullen young woman from Megranome, since no Forsaken would accept such a menial job.

Hugh took his turn and was delighted to see how the artist’s use of forced perspective caused the horseman to appear as if riding out of the very roof itself. He asked the guide how it was done and the Megranomer replied in a dull monotone that “tile-artists of the Cullen Era were masters of the geometry of optics” and that the horseman was “Christopher Chu Himself bringing word of the Brythonic attack to Boss Pyotr.” Hugh gathered that he was not the first ever to ask the question. Hugh wondered briefly who Christopher Chu Himself was before the girl called time on him and he stepped down from the platform to encounter “Kalim,” the manservant to “Lady Melisond.”

O happy chance!

Of course, it has all been carefully choreographed ahead of time; but Hugh had already encountered two other people he had met on Die Bold, so the usefulness of the charade was beyond question. “Reggie, meechee!” he cried for the benefit of onlookers. “I thought Lady Melisonde was going to Friesing’s World. I must tell my straw Benlever and we will have lunch together. Have you seen the tiled rooftops? An effect of the most amazing!”

The Fudir glanced at the galloping horseman on the roof of the PM’s Residence. “I wonder if he had his treachery already in mind.”

“Who?”

“Chu. You know this peninsula was called Chu State in the early days. There were four or five refugee camps here, south of the marshes.”

“Unified by Chu?”

“No, by someone called Bossman Sergei. There was a whole dynasty of ‘Bossmen,’ and the Chus were their majordomos.”

“You mean, like a tainiste?”

“More like glorified butlers. The story there”—he nodded to the rooftop—“is that Bossman Pyotr wouldn’t believe Chu’s warning about a winter attack; so Chu improvised a hasty defense along the Challing River and repulsed the Brythons. Afterward, the people demanded he become the new Bossman.”

“And it wasn’t like that?”

The Fudir shrugged. “It’s the official history, so it’s probably wrong. I don’t know that Chu planned to seize power from the beginning; but…Ah! Here’s Lady Melisonde.” He bowed from the waist. “Lady, see who I’ve found.”

Bridget ban wore an ankle-length gown of emerald-green edged in gilt geometries, and a matching pillbox cap with a half veil hanging across her face. She offered her hand, saying, “Ringbao! Top of the morning to ye!”

Hugh bowed and pressed the hand to his lips in the High Taran fashion. “And the rest of the day to yourself,” he replied, repressing his instinct to reply in the more vulgar Eireannaughta fashion.

Shortly, Tol Benlever had joined them and Kalim led them to the Green, where they claimed a table. Lady Melisonde ordered drinks from the dumbwaiter—four Ruby Roses—and shortly a machine of some sort rolled up to their table with flute glasses inserted in matching sockets.

They each took one and Melisonde said, “’Saken mechs are quite clever, don’t you think? They employ these automated servants for all sorts of menial tasks.”

“Whatever will the Terrans do for jobs,” murmured Kalim.

“Well, they don’t speak out of turn,” said Tol Benlever, with a significant glance at Kalim. When Lady Melisonde said, “Go,” and the autoservant left, he chuckled. “And they listen better than Terrans, too.”

“Ah, but a human waiter can anticipate your needs,” Ringbao pointed out. “I suspect that autoservant can only do what it’s told. And before you jape on that, my straw,” he added to Benlever, “may I remind you that cunning is to be prized wherever it is found.”

“Granted,” said the Krinthic trader. “Say, have any of you seen that nice Alabastrine woman we met on Die Bold? I think she was coming here, too.”

Three shakes of the head. “’Tis a grand, big planet, Tol, darling,” said Melisonde. “I much suppose we’ll run into her by and by.” She raised her glass. “Our mutual successes.”

They all drank. Hugh found the liqueur thick, almost syrupy, and with a distinct cherry aftertaste. “Not bad,” he said. “Though I’d not drink it in quantity.”

“You couldn’t afford it in quantity,” said Benlever. “It’s one of the ‘padded wines’ they make in the Dalhousie Valley here,” he added for the others’ benefit. “I’m to meet with their master vintner tomorrow to discuss a trade deal. We may sample enough there to satisfy even Ringbao’s refined taste. Haha!” The others chuckled and pressed him for details, but he smiled and touched the side of his nose to indicate that those details were a trade secret.

“What of your brother,” Kalim said to his mistress. He meant Grimpen. “You thought he might be here.”

“I’ve seen no sign of him, I fear. I wish that omadhaun had left word where he’d be staying. At least he didn’t do anything boorish to get his name in the news feeds.” She meant that Grimpen had not openly named himself a Hound to the authorities. Yet if he was “flying low,” he might be very difficult to find, nor desirous of being found.

“I can ask around,” said Kalim. “I have friends here. They may’ve seen him.” He meant the Terran Corner of Chel’veckistad.

Lady Melisonde nodded. “So long as you are back in time for my country drive. I do so want to see the Northbound Hills.”

They ordered a lunch of quagmire soup—a chowder of corn and seafood similar to the chow pinggo that Hugh had grown up with—and thick “glutton” sandwiches of fried black bread filled with fish, sausage, cheese, and tomatoes. To accompany the meal, they ordered a local beer called Snowflake. Then, having established for anyone listening their companionship, they broke up. Hugh went to arrange fallback lodgings under different names. Greystroke vanished into the crowd on the Green to look for signs of a populace already ensnared by the Dancer. And the Fudir slipped off to change clothes and plumb the Corner while Bridget ban set out to look for her “brother.”

The Forsaken Archives on Udjenya Street, two blocks off the Great Green, was an impressively large building and bore a motto across its facade in a script and language that Hugh did not recognize—most likely one of those tongues, now forgotten, spoken by some of the original deportees. He supposed the motto was imposing and inspirational to anyone who could read it.

“I’m working for Kungwa Hilderbrandt, the Valencian historian,” he told the senior archivist, showing him some official-looking papers that Greystroke had printed up on board Skyfarer. But the archivist barely glanced at them. He didn’t care about outworlders, not even famous outworld historians. Still, one must be hospitable. So he put on what Hugh supposed was meant as a welcoming face and waited.

“Scholar Hildebrandt is tracing the genetic versions of the prehuman legends, and—”

“What the devil is a genetic version?”

“Why, as surely you know, different versions of the prehuman legends are circulating on different worlds. Scholar Hildebrandt believes these are all ‘descended with modifications,’ as he puts it, from original versions. For example, there is a version of the Tale of the Two Toppers on Megranome that he has shown to be elaborated from a passage in the Tale of the Awkward Kitchen-maid.”

Hugh had managed to glaze the archivist’s eyes. However much he did not care about outworld scholars, he cared even less about their research. His job was to preserve and protect the documents and media in his care. About their contents, he did not give a fig.

“And so, I would like to read the oldest compendium of tales in your collection.”

“Oh, would you?” the man asked, so loudly that others in the vestibule turned and looked. “What is it with you outies? One after another, you come parading in here; and do you want to see the Articles for State? No. The Trans-Oceanic Pact? Couldn’t care less. The Collected Letters of Genghis John Chu? No, you want to read old fairy tales. Bozhemoy! You expect us to let you handle the oldest and most fragile papers we have? No one touches those. No one. I don’t care how big you are!”

Somewhat startled at this tirade, Hugh said, “No, no, goodsir. I don’t need to handle the originals. I’m only interested in the matter. Surely you have scanned images…?”

“Of course, we have scanned images. We’re not a bunch of noovos, like some planets I could name, but won’t.”

“And I’m not really very big.” Hugh said this with his most disarming smile. He knew that his musculature, toughened by the hard months “in the wind” on New Eireann, made him seem bigger than he was.

The archivist grunted. “No, not you. It was the first one. He was a regular Nolan beast. Sign here.” He handed Hugh a light pen and Hugh entered his supposed name and homeworld and scribbled a signature. There had been seven individuals in the past month who wanted to view Document 0.0037/01. “Which was the big guy?” he asked curiously. Only two names were off-world: Elriady Moore of Ramage and Keeling Ruehommage of Wiedermeier’s Chit.

The archivist sniffed and looked at the screen. “That one,” he said, tapping Moore’s name. “Why?”

“He’s a field researcher for a rival scholar. I bet I can describe the other outworlder for you. Coal-black skin, bright yellow hair, blue eyes. Thin as a rail.”

“A-yuh. That’s her. Sweet young thing, too.”

“Alabaster accent?”

“Alabaster? Nah. She’s from the Chit.” He pointed again to the screen, as if he had never heard of false names and feigned identities. “They sound like Megranomers.”

Hugh thanked the archivist, who gave him a code and directed him to a reading room. On the way there, Hugh pulled a disposable handy from his pocket, called the base-camp number, and said, “Look for a large man named Elriady Moore.” Then he dropped the handy into a shredder and continued to the reading room.

“For all the good it did us,” he complained later that night to Greystroke. “The oldest versions of the prehuman legends. Handwritten, if you can imagine it, on paper. The annotation states that they were collected by a self-appointed commission during refugee times. Oh, that must have delighted those folks who had lost their homeworld! Academic researchers!”

They were in Greystroke’s hotel room at the Hatchley, several blocks off Great Green, and Greystroke had ordered up in-room meals. Hugh had plugged his memo stick into the hotel room’s ’face to show them the download that was the fruit of his labors. “It may have been a way to keep sane, by continuing the routines of their past lives.”

Greystroke grunted. “No, the camps needed sanitation, not sanity. I begin to wonder if Fudir’s Commonwealth was worth saving, if that’s the way their exiles behaved.” He walked over to the screen as he ate. “Funny-looking squiggles. We should’ve known they’d not have used Gaelactic back then. What language is it?”

“I didn’t want to ask the archivist. I was a scholar’s field researcher. I should have known the languages. I downloaded a copy, thanked him, and left. The Fudir looked at it before he and Bridget ban went off for their drive. He thinks it may be Brythic or Roosky. Those were two of the groups that were settled here. He says the Vraddy and the Zhõgwó used very different writing systems. He’ll take a shot at reading it when he gets back.”

“Well, getting more background on the Stonewall mythos may be useful, but it needn’t get in the way of our main task. Bridget ban followed up on your call. Grimpen was staying in Eastport near the beanstalk base. And Fudir’s friends around the Corner said he went camping in the hills. Bought a full rig at an outfitter’s—thermal bag, tent, cooker, maps, and compass—the works.”

“Question is,” said Hugh. “Did he find what he came for and decide to take a little vacation; or was he still looking when he drove to the trail-head?”

The Fudir had pulled the ground car off to the side of the road, where there was a scenic overlook, and now stood beside Bridget ban while she studied the valley below with a pair of high-resolution scanning binoculars. The Fudir tried to keep a map of the Dalhousie Valley spread flat on the ground car’s hood against the blustery winds that blew on the hilltops. Open beside the map was an ecological gazetteer of the region that he had found in a second-hand bookstore in Chel’veckistad. Now and then, for no particular reason, he would point to a passing bird and then flip through the book and Bridget ban would pretend to follow its flight with her binoculars. They operated on the theory that if they could see the Dalhousie Estate from here, the Dalhousie Estate could see them. For the same reason, the Fudir really did annotate a small notebook with avian observations. He recognized some of the birds from Jehovah and other worlds he had been on, but there were some that seemed unique to this world. All part of the grim carelessness with which these worlds had originally been seeded. He wondered if the Yung-lo worlds had failed because something vital had been missing in the original terraforming.

Bridget ban turned away from her study of the estate. “There is a steep ravine on the northeast side,” she said, “which they don’t seem to watch carefully.”

The Fudir shrugged. It was a wealthy estate, not a prison. The guards were to fend off importunate visitors, not a determined infiltration. There would be fences, burglar alarms, possibly patrols and surveillance cameras. There were unlikely to be trip wires, dead lines, or even motion sensors. The guards would not want to scramble after every fox or rabbit that ran across the grounds.

“There’s an interesting bird,” said the Fudir. “A double-bellied nap-snatcher.”

Bridget ban turned her binoculars on the approaching ornithopter. Two guards in gray uniforms.

“Twenty-four minutes response time,” said the Fudir with a touch of contempt.

“Try to be polite. We don’t want them to make any special note of us.”

“Yes, yes, missy. No more’n they already have. Remember, this road is outside the estate bounds. We’ve every right to be here.”

Bridget ban said nothing to answer the obvious. She lowered her binoculars and waved at the approaching guards. “Tally ho!” she called. The Fudir shook his head.

The ornithopter set down a dozen double paces off, on the road. That this would block any traffic coming up the mountain from either direction seemed not to bother them at all. There were certain advantages to working for the biggest corporation on the planet, if not in the entire Spiral Arm. The ICC did not own the government of Old ’Saken, but it might fairly be said that they rented it.

“The top o’ the marnin’ to ye, darlings,” Bridget ban said to the two men who approached. The senior—he had stripes on his sleeve—lifted his cap just a little. It was more like pushing it back a little on his head. His partner, a shorter, darker man, remained a step behind him and kept an eye on everyone. He’s participated in too many simulations, the Fudir thought.

“May I ask what you are doing here, ma’am?” the senior guard said.

“Why, birding, to be sure, Sergeant.”

“Corporal, ma’am,” but the Fudir could see he was a little pleased at the virtual promotion. “Why the interest in the estate?”

“What estate?”

The Fudir thought that might be carrying innocence too far. “The Dalhousie Estate, ma’am,” the Fudir said, pointing to the map. “You remember I told you. The wine-makers.”

“Oh, losh, Reggie. I’ve no interest in architecture. You know that.” She glanced into the valley at the complex of buildings. “Which one is it? The whole thing? My. Not as big as the palace complex on High Tara, but a nice enough country lodge.”

“And you would be…?”

“Julienne Lady Melisonde,” said Bridget ban. “I’m Second Assistant Lady-in-Waiting to Herself, the Banry Keeva of High Tara.”

The corporal was writing in a small notebook with a light pen. “Uh-hunh. Sounds real important.” He looked at the Fudir.

The Fudir jerked a thumb at Bridget ban. “I’m with her.”

The guard gave him a suspicious look. “You’re a Terry.”

“Yeah, but I’m housebroken.”

The guard turned to Lady Melisonde. “You gotta watch letting them run their mouth, lady.”

They showed him their identification cards. The guards had probably seen High Taran cards before, however little importance the court was given this far from the center of the League. If he was impressed, he did a good job concealing it. He tried to look at the bird book open on the ground car’s hood without being obvious.

“I heard on Die Bold,” Lady Melisonde said, “that the Friesing’s woodleafsinger had recently been introduced here, quite by accident. I was wondering if you had seen one.”

The guard’s face showed that he did not know one bird from another, but he answered politely enough. “No, ma’am, I have not. But you might want to try the Rolling River Nature Reserve, out on the peninsula.” By which he meant, far away from the Dalhousie Valley.

As the two guards returned to their ornithopter, the shorter one, who had remained mute until now, said to the Fudir, “You pukkah fanty, sahb?” And he made a Brotherhood sign with his fingers that the Fudir recognized.

The other guard swatted him on the arm. “What I gotta tell you about bukkin that lingo, pal? You speak Gaelactic when you’re on duty.”

The next morning, Greystroke and Hugh went to keep their appointment with the master vintner to discuss the proposed contract. In the ground car along the way, Hugh mentioned that the deal could be a profitable one if it ever were carried out. Greystroke reminded him that it was only a ruse to gain access to the estate. Hugh sighed. “I know. But it really is a sweet deal.”

A half league past Chel’veckistad city limits, they left the traffic grid and switched over to manual control. Hugh, who was driving, fussed a little bit with the unfamiliar control panel and at one point swerved into the opposing lane. “Sorry,” he said. “On New Eireann, we used the other side of the road.”

The countryside was a pleasant one of gently rolling hills terraced into vineyards. The landscape was open, warm and dry in the soft morning sun. The land rose, and the road switchbacked up to the crest of Moaning Mountain and down the other side into the Dalhousie Valley. Hugh whistled at the sight of the cliffs and the distant bright blue flashing river. Greystroke made no response and Hugh glanced to the passenger seat on his left, just to assure himself that the Grey One was still there.

A few moments passed, and Greystroke said, “You couldn’t possibly have thought I jumped out the window on one of the turns.”

Hugh grinned and said nothing.

The estate entrance was an elliptical arch made of granite and shuttered by a wrought-iron gateway. The old Dalhousie corporate logo carved into the keystone was still used by the ICC for their wine-and-spirits division. They showed their passes to the guards, who wore the uniform of the 17th Peacekeepers, ICC Civil Police company.

“Take the first right-hand turn, honored sirs,” the guard said. “The winery is the large stone building at the end. Yellow granite. You can’t miss it.”

They thanked him and drove through. “I don’t get it,” Hugh said. “If Lady Cargo has the Dancer, why does everything on ’Saken seem so normal?”

“Two reasons,” Greystroke said. “One: you can’t improvise your way into power. There are logistical details to work out. Sometime soon, I expect, the ICC will buy commercial time for a ‘must-see’ spectacular show. They’ll want as many ears as possible listening at the same time up front. Remember, if someone out of earshot—maybe across the sea in Sinkingland or up on Jubilee Moon—learns what’s going on and disapproves vehemently enough, they could lob a missile directly on old Lady Cargo’s head. I don’t care how persuasive that stone is. It can’t sweet-talk ballistics and a targeting computer.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“Why bother? If the ICC and its policies are already well thought of here—the government’s not exactly in her pocket, but they do snuggle closely—why impose your will? To tell everyone to eat their vegetables? I understand power corrupts, but I hardly think Lady Cargo cares what simulations people experience or what they cook for dinner.”

Hugh nodded. The reasons made sense, but it seemed to him that Cargo had had the Dancer long enough that some move should already have been made. “Pup?” he said.

“What?”

“Suppose there has been a broadcast of some sort, and we listened to it, and we were ordered to forget we had heard it. How would we ever know?”

They pulled into the visitor lot by the winery and Hugh deactivated the motor, which spun down with a slight whine and the ground car settled onto its pylons. Greystroke opened his door. “We wouldn’t,” he decided.

The negotiations with Bris Dent, the winery’s business manager, were tough but straightforward. Naturally, Dent proposed terms more favorable to Dalhousie Wines. “We expect price of our wines, which are unique in this quarter of Arm, to rise on Krinth and so shipment will be more valuable relative to crater gems. Krinthic crater gems to be dropping by two percent.”

Tol Benlever waved his hand. “You cannot possibly know that, ’Spodin Dent.”

“Our economic models best in all Spiral Arm. Find case where we are being wrong more than one, two points, Acts of God excepted. These price movements almost certain. You still make good profit when you resell wine on Krinth.”

Hugh said, “Then you’d not object to making those terms a futures option rather than a straightforward price.”

“No, not at all.”

Eventually, they shook hands all around and Dent said that the contracts would be sent around to Benlever’s hotel by the evening for his legal staff—meaning Hugh—to look at. Afterward, they were given a tour of the winery—except for the padding room, where the proprietary paddings, or “blends,” were added to “thicken ’er up.”

When the tour was drawing to a close, Benlever said, as if in passing, “I was told that Lady Cargo has the most extensive collection of prehuman artifacts this side of Jehovah.”

“Oh, perhaps in whole Spiral Arm,” said Dent.

“Is it open to the public? I was told in the City that she sometimes hosts viewings.”

“Once a month…Ah, that is being local month by Splendid Moon, roughly one case of days.”

Hugh leaned toward Benlever and murmured, “A case of days in dodeka time is just under three metric weeks.” Benlever nodded.

“Next viewing on Thirdsday,” Dent said helpfully.

“Pity,” said Benlever. “I’ve business on Abyalon that will not wait.”

“Business involving Hollyberry jellies, let me guess,” said the vintner.

“Is my business so transparent, Ringbao? Haha. I don’t suppose, since I’m here right now, I couldn’t get a peek at them? I recently acquired a prehuman artifact myself, and I’d be interested in how it prices out.”

“Is specialty market. Would you like to speak to Lady Cargo herself?”

“Is she in residence?”

“Soglass. I take you to her.” Dent turned and Greystroke and Hugh followed him along a crushed stone path to the rear of the Big House. Hugh leaned close and whispered, “Is this too easy?”

Greystroke nodded. “Be alert.”

Radha Lady Cargo was a short, wizened woman who wore a wraparound dress of bright patterns that left one shoulder bare. Hugh guessed her age at a hundred and twenty, past her prime, but holding up very well. But what he noticed most of all was not the mature body, but the intelligent eyes. He had looked into enough faces to know when there was someone looking back.

After some polite introductions, she bowed graciously and personally led them through the room she had set aside for the artifacts.

“There is simply no price on such things,” she said as she showed them from case to case. “This item, found on Megranome, seems to be part of a control circuit; but what it controlled, who will ever know? See the corrosion here? Not even the prehumans built forever.” Greystroke asked some questions about provenance and Hugh made occasional notes in his handy. He was surprised at how the old woman’s eyes lit as she described her collection. She really took joy of it. He had imagined someone grimmer, more jaded.

“What of the Ourobouros Circuit?” Greystroke asked. “Your most famous acquisition.”

“Yes,” she said. “Poor Chan was never able to make it work; and yet it seemed to be whole.” Her lips curled a little at that and Hugh wondered at her brief and secret amusement. There’s something there, he thought. Something important about the Circuit. And then…They couldn’t have gotten it working, could they? That would be the biggest news the League ever saw.

Or “the best-kept secret in the Spiral Arm.”

He glanced at Benlever to see if Greystroke had noticed that smile; but the Pup’s face betrayed no sign of awareness.

“We keep that in its own room,” said Lady Cargo and she spoke into her wristband. “Visitors coming.” Hugh pondered that, as well.

There was a large man standing outside the door and Lady Cargo paused a moment to ask him some inconsequential question about household maintenance. Hugh noticed that the discussion lasted long enough for a discreet light inset into the woodwork of the door to change from red to green before Lady Cargo said, “This way,” and led them into the room.

It was a broad room with perhaps a score of people working at desks. Interfaces winking and scrolling, low susurrus of voices over headsets. Lightboards on the wall with commodity prices from a hundred worlds flashing in turn. Among them, Hugh thought, must be the forecasted price of padded wines and crater jewels. In the center of the room, a chair fastened to the floor faced down a broad aisle clear of all obstructions to the famous Ourobouros Circuit. In form, it resembled a wreath, the wires twisted and twined around one another in a complex pattern incomprehensible to the eye.

“They say,” Lady Cargo informed them, “that a part of it wraps through a dimension that we cannot sense. It never seems the same twice.”

“I’m surprised you keep it in a working office,” said Tol Benlever, glancing around at the muted activity in the room. “This is your trade desk, is it not?”

“One of them. We maintain such rooms on numerous worlds. There’s no secret that I plan to adopt the Circuit as a corporate symbol—the ungraspable intricacies of trade networks connecting the worlds of the Periphery. Fitting, I think. So there’s no reason why my people cannot enjoy the sight of it. ’Spodin Della Costa, would you take a seat?”

She meant Hugh. He lowered himself into the chair, shifted his weight. “Quite comfortable,” he said.

“Now stare at the Circuit. Try to follow the twists and turns of the wiring.” Some of the traders had paused in their work to watch, with grins on their faces.

Hugh shrugged and focused on the wreath. He picked an arbitrary starting point and tried to follow the path of the Circuit.

Benlever asked, “Are they optical wires?” But his voice seemed to echo from far away.

The wreath started to spin. Hugh blinked.

“Optic,” he heard Lady Cargo say, “ceramic-composite, metal. It’s a chimera, of sorts.”

The wreath seemed to approach him and the light blue wall, visible through the center of the wreath, receded into the distance. The lighting seemed to change. The wall acquired a reddish tinge while everything in the foreground, illuminated by an unreal ghostly glow, lost all depth. A two-dimensional figure moved across his field of view and Hugh felt his shoulder violently shaken.

He moved, and colors, shapes, lighting, and perspective snapped back to normal.

Now the people at the trade desks were laughing and even Lady Cargo smiled openly. “A fascinating illusion, isn’t it?” she said. “It was the one thing Chan Mirslaf learned before he gave up. It’s almost hypnotic. We find it useful for meditation. It relaxes.”

Hugh blew out his breath. “The far wall seemed to be twenty leagues away.”

Lady Cargo straightened and her smile vanished. “Please don’t touch it, ’Spodin Benlever.”

Greystroke had gone to the back wall and was bending close to the artifact. In answer to Lady Cargo’s command, he held his hands up and away from his body. “Fascinating, indeed,” he said, turning away. “Well, I don’t want to keep your people from their work. Unless, it means I receive a better quote from Vintner Dent, haha!”

Lady Cargo led them from the Trading Desk to her own private office, where she offered both a glass of padded wine and dismissed her aides, who had followed along like a cloud of gnats.

“Well,” she said, putting her now empty glass back on the sideboard. “Do you have it? Have you got it?”

Greystroke held a hand up to forestall any question from Hugh. “You mean the artifact I obtained?”

“Don’t play foolish games. I appreciate your effort, and you were quite right to bring it to me. But please don’t try to extort a price. You’re entitled to a generous finder’s fee, of course, and compensation for your troubles; but I do have legal title to it.”

“What makes you believe,” Greystroke said carefully, “that the artifact I obtained is the same one that you have apparently lost.” And Hugh thought, She doesn’t have it, after all! But he kept his face controlled.

Lady Cargo pointed at Greystroke. “You, sir, are a Krinthic merchant-trader—my people have checked your bona fides with House Kellenikos—but this man…” And now the bony finger was aimed at Hugh. “This man, you hired elsewhere. On Die Bold? Let me suggest to you that it was Ringbao della Costa who presented you with the artifact.”

Greystroke bowed, extending his arm gracefully. “You are wise beyond your years, lady.” Hugh, thinking furiously, wondered what was going on. The Pup was improvising over this unexpected development.

“You took it from Gronvius, didn’t you, Ringbao? No need to prevaricate. Gronvius was a traitor, and deserved to die. But what you took from him—or what he sold you—was my property.”

Hugh thought, Gronvius? Aloud, he followed Greystroke’s lead. “I did not know him by that name.”

“It doesn’t matter what Todor Captain Gronvius called himself. He was a renegade. You see, when I said prehuman artifacts are priceless I didn’t mean you couldn’t sell them. Oh, no. They can command stiff prices in the right places. This temptation proved too much for Captain Gronvius and others in the squadron escorting the artifact. He mutinied, and fled with the statue. He tried to hide on Die Bold, but our detectives tracked him down. Witnesses described his two companions. One of them was you.” She produced a printout of the Die Bold police sketches.

“Hardly a companion, lady. Chance-met drinkers in a bar.”

“No, his quarters were thoroughly searched. His movements were carefully backtracked. There is no hiding hole; no safe-deposit box. He must have had the Twisting Stone on his person; and you took it from him when he was executed.”

Hugh did not think “executed” was the proper word. The assassins had also tried to kill him; but he did not bring it up. “And how do you know that this…Gronvius, you said? How do you know that Gronvius had your artifact?”

“Bakhtiyar Commodore Saukkonen was in command of the squadron. He escaped the mutiny and told us what had happened.”

“Ah,” said Greystroke, his head bobbing. “Yes. Certain matters now become clear. Ringbao, you were less than forthcoming with me about that odd little brick, and you’ve put me in an embarrassing position respecting our hostess; perhaps even damaging the compact we recently entered into. We’ll speak about this tonight. ’Spozhá,” he added, “you have but to name a fair price and we will bring the artifact to you tomorrow. I will accept a draught for the finder’s fee in Gladiola Bills or in Krinthic ‘owls.’ If your people could have that ready by seven tomorrow, I will provide you with an affidavit showing provenance, sworn and notarized. And the unsavory business on Die Bold should only add to its allure.”

“Yes,” said Lady Cargo distantly, “art loves a scandal.”

In their ground car, after leaving the estate, Hugh took a deep breath. “I hadn’t expected that.”

“That Radha doesn’t have the Dancer, after all?”

“That, too. I meant that we would leave the estate alive.”

“Ah. Well, I wouldn’t worry too much. It was easier for them to let us fetch the Dancer than to torture its location out of us.”

“As long as it was easier…”

“By the way, just so you know. I have a little appliance here that neutralizes listening devices like the one they planted behind the sun-shield.”

Hugh blinked, turned down the sun-shield, and saw a small scorch mark the size of a pinpoint. He flipped it back up. “Neutralized, alright. They’ll probably follow us.”

Greystroke looked in his mirror. “Yes, I expect so. Old habits. They think we’ll lead them to the Dancer and save them the cost of a finder’s fee. Not worth the effort. Once she has the Dancer in her hands, she can simply tell us we’ve already been paid—or that no payment was promised—and we’d believe her. But there’s the slight chance that we may abscond with the statue. She doesn’t think we know what it is; but she’s certain we can get a better deal from any other collector in the Spiral Arm. Greed and power make people stupid.”

“I’ll try to remember that, if and when.”

The Pup snorted. “Yes. She should have offered us payment enough that we’d be sure to bring it. Well, when we check the car back into the agency, it shouldn’t be beyond the skills of the Ghost of Ardow to blend into the crowds and disappear. Buy a disposable handy, call the others, and tell them to abandon our rooms, and fall back on the secondary reservations. Lady Cargo knows the names we rented under, and it doesn’t take much for the ICC to call in a favor or two from the government of ’Saken. You know the code word?”

“The Fudir told me it was ‘skedaddle.’”

Greystroke shook his head. “Terrans.”

“You know, Pup, unless Todor was lying in the Mild Beast…”

“Yes. This Commodore Saukkonen must have the Dancer. Once the officers in the fleet learned what it was, the temptation proved too great. Why turn it over to the chairman when you can keep it for yourself?”

“Some tried to stop him.”

“The ones who had no chance of gaining it for themselves, excuse my cynicism. But it no longer matters one way or the other. Saukkonen knows logistics, and has probably been making preparations for his coup. But I noticed something interesting in the tangle of the tale. The Dancer’s powers have limits…”

“…Or else Lady Cargo wouldn’t still be so eager to obtain it. I saw that. Saukkonen could have told her to forget the whole thing—stone, legend, everything. I wonder if she does remember the Stone’s powers, or only that she wanted desperately to obtain it.”

“In either case, there are some things—deep desires, perhaps—that the Dancer cannot edit.”

“There’s your answer, then.”

Greystroke turned a questioning look on him.

“We have to make sure that recovering the Dancer is our deepest desire.”

The Pup shook his head. “I don’t think it works that way.”

Hugh had purchased new clothing, discarded his identifications, and was walking through a narrow alley between two warehouses on his way to their fallback hotel in a run-down part of the City when he sensed another man walking close behind him. He began to consider his options. He hadn’t been such a fool as to take a weapon to the Dalhousie Estate, and that meant the only weapons he now had were those he could improvise from the materials in the alley. Of course, the Glens of Ardow had taught him improvisation.

“Rest easy, friend,” he heard a voice say. “I followed you because no one can follow him.”

Hugh danced a few paces ahead and spun around. The man who had accosted him was unshaven and wore stinking rags. His fingernails were black with dirt and grime. But most of all, he was large. Hugh, not a small man, came only to his shoulder. He looked up.

“Hello, Grimpen.”

When he reached the hotel, the others were already waiting. Hugh stepped inside, leading Grimpen. He looked at Bridget ban. “He followed me home. Can we keep him?”

“I cannot tell you,” Grimpen said later, “how much a hot bath and a change of clothes mean to me. There is no greater pleasure in life. Well, perhaps one.” He had but lately emerged from Bridget ban’s refreshing room, now groomed, shaven, cleaned, and wearing a nondescript “shiki” favored by residents of the Fourteenth District. He stretched, and the space he occupied doubled. Then he looked about the dayroom of the apartment.

“You, I know,” he said to Bridget ban. And to Greystroke, “You, I know of. And you—Hugh, is it?—have been traveling with Greystroke; but I don’t know you and I don’t know your friend.”

“Och, Large-hound,” said Bridget ban, “is there no end to the catalogue of what you don’t know?”

“You,” Grimpen said to the Fudir, “are a Terran, or I miss my guess.”

“Is that important?” the Fudir asked him.

“To you, I suppose.” He looked at his colleagues. “Is he alright? A Terry? Confederate ties?”

“Enough Confederate ties to make a fancy bow,” said Greystroke, “but he works for himself.”

“He’s the one,” said Hugh, “who got us on the trail of the Dancer in the first place.”

“Dancer?”

“Oh. You’d know it as the Twisting Stone.”

“Oh, that. What’s your interest in that?”

The others looked at Grimpen in astonishment until Bridget ban spoke. “Why hae ye come here, then, if nae for the Dancer?”

Now it was Grimpen’s turn to look astonished. He pointed to Greystroke and Bridget ban, in turn. “You, Fir Li sent to track down Donovan. You went off after the phantom fleet. I went to learn how the ICC knew so much so soon. Yet, here we are, all together. It’s enough to make me think there really is a purpose to the universe. Or at least a punch line. Why don’t we take turns explaining how we all wound up here in this cockroach heaven?”

The briefing took them into the night. Grimpen listened carefully, took notes, asked penetrating questions. He was merciless in undermining their assumptions, pointing out alternative explanations for each of their conclusions. But in the end, he had to admit that the legend of the Twisting Stone seemed to have some substance to it. “Though I’d be wary of putting too much faith in the details.”

“Then why did you consult the Book of Legends in the Archive?” Hugh asked.

“I lost a day and a half on that,” Grimpen complained. “My ship’s intelligence had trouble translating it…”

The Fudir told him it was because the refugee camps in this region had been settled by a mix of people called Brits and Rooskies and the language was an amalgam of their two tongues. Grimpen smiled and said, “That’s nice. But what I didn’t know was what I was looking for in that manuscript.”

“Then how,” said the Fudir, “did you know when you found it?”

Grimpen smiled and pointed a finger at the Terran. “I like you. You’re funny. No, I knew the kind of thing I was looking for.”

“Which was…?” Greystroke said.

“The Cynthians knew too much, too soon. When they came through Sapphire Point the first time, they said they’d tortured the factor on Cynthia over some slight of etiquette and he warned them that the ICC had the Twisting Stone. They came back later—you’d already gone by then, Grey One—and they’d gone to New Eireann to get the thing. But, d’ye see, they left the Hadramoo before the word could have reached them. It’s six or seven metric weeks from New Eireann to the Hadramoo. As near as I could tell, they’d set out to seize the stone no more than a week after the ICC laid hands on it in the first place. And that meant…”

“The ICC has some way of sending messages faster than courier ships.” That was the Fudir. “Well, it makes sense, now that the Big Fella here has pointed it out. They always seem to know where the prices were best and what was selling well on which planets.”

Hugh began to curse. “Then Jumdar didn’t come to New Eireann by chance, either. I’ll bet a shiny ducat that Nunruddin called for troops as soon as the coup went bad. And when the Cynthians came, she had plenty of time to warn her superiors so they could intercept the rievers at Peacock Junction.”

Grimpen nodded. “If the Dark-hound had spent as much time analyzing ICC activities as he did Rift crossings, one of us would have tumbled to this years ago. I suspected they had something; but I didn’t know what. A swifter swiftie? A secret shortcut, like you found at Peacock? I was reasonably sure it wasn’t a new invention—‘There’s nothing new under the suns,’ right? But maybe, just maybe, a prehuman technology that they had stumbled on. So I translated the titles of the old legends in the archive, looking for anything relating to communication. I found five that were suggestive. One was the Tale of the Calling Ring.”

Hugh remembered the chair facing the Ourobouros Circuit, remembered too a similar arrangement in the ruined vault on New Eireann, and suddenly he knew. “The Ourobouros Circuit! It’s a communicator.”

Grimpen growled. “The sketch in the manuscript looked like a torus—a ring, not a wreath.”

“A case for the Circuit,” Greystroke suggested. “Now lost.”

The large Hound’s brow knit. “As might could be,” he said, “or I’d’ve realized sooner. I scouted the ICC facilities, here in the City and out in the Hills for some sign where the communicator might be. Kidnapped one of their security guards out at the estate, and babble-juiced him. He didn’t know anything, but he thought there was secret stuff going on with the Trade Desk. So I snatched a trader out of a bar in the City, ran the usual roster, and hit pay dirt. Sent a swiftie to Fir Li. But somehow they got wind of me and I had to go to ground.” He looked at Greystroke and smiled. “Not as easy for me to hide as you. I had to find a bigger tree to duck behind.” His laugh was like a fault line splitting under the earth.

Greystroke nodded. “The Circuit was warm when I got near it; so I knew it had been doing something, but I thought it might have been, oh, a quantum computer or some other magical instrument. Something they used to project the markets with such uncanny accuracy.”

“I’m thinking,” said Hugh, “that they stumbled onto the secret when they were building a duplicate. Once there were two of them, that ‘infinite depth’ illusion turned into a channel. I’ll bet that it bores a Krasnikov tube somehow between two wreaths.”

“And now we know, meegos,” the Fudir said, “why Lady Cargo was so anxious to have the Dancer. I never saw the sense of it, myself. With it, she could control a single system—one that she already effectively controls—and maybe dominate systems close by. For this, she sends a flotilla to tangle with Cynthian pirates? But the Dancer and the Circuit, ah, that’s another kettle of soup entirely. Her voice could be heard on every inhabited world, as near to simultaneous as matters.”

“Except, it’s the commodore, not the chairman, we have to worry about now,” Hugh said. “And it occurs to me that a naval base might be tougher to enter than Dalhousie Estate.”

When the Fudir awoke in the middle of the night, he saw Bridget ban sitting in a soft chair across the room. The night lighting from the baseboards gave an odd sort of blue-white insubstantiality to her upper body. The shadows were cast upward, like spirits freed of the body.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

He could see the head shake briefly, but her face was in shadows and he could not make out her expression. “How could I have missed it?”

“The same way we all did,” he told her. “We see the world through our assumptions; and when we don’t know what those assumptions are, they can trap us. Sometimes, it’s only possible to see the truth in the right moment of time. In the ancient legends, the god Darwin prophesied in a world in which tradesmen struggled in competition. The god Newton appeared in a world that had discovered machinery; the god Einstein in an age when…”

“Awa’ wi’ ye and yer gods. I don’t think they were gods at all, but only Terrans that the One God gifted with wisdom.”

“The One God?” The Fudir had always imagined the gods as beings much like men, but with powers beyond those even of the Hounds, and with an ability to act unseen greater even than that of Greystroke. As Newton controlled the motion of stars and planets, Maxwell and his demons shaped and moved whole galaxies and the electric roads that entwined them. And the quarrel between them could not be resolved even by the god Einstein, who sought a rune that would join them. The idea that there might be only one god astonished him.

“Och, list’ tae me loshing. I said there’d be nae religious arguments, and here I am starting one myself.”

“I never argue about the gods,” the Fudir said. “It leads nowhere, and can only irritate them.”

Bridget ban laughed at that, and they spoke a little more of inconsequentials. “Och, yer a comfort, Fudir,” she said just before falling asleep. “There’s nae denying it.”

“Am I?” the Fudir asked the night when she was breathing softly.

In the morning, when Bridget ban awoke, the Fudir was gone.