Up Jim River

VIII. MONSTROUS REGIMENTS

They broke fast in their suite, a sparely furnished room, in keeping with O’Haran aesthetic norms. The walls were bare, save for a single print: an orange circle on white. On the counter, a trickle of water burbled across a bowl of small pebbles and into the recirculator. A tree the size of Donovan’s palm grew there. Everything was shining chrome, black lacquer, muted colors. Compared to the dense, dark décor of Dancing Vrouw, the riotous intricacies of High Tara, or the haphazard eclecticism of Harpaloon, the room exuded serenity and peace.

Which was just as well, for the scarred man furnished none. Seldom chipper at breakfast, he grew nettlesome when he found his plans inexplicably awry. He expected plans to go awry. It was in their nature. But he at least expected the glitches to be explicable.

“What do you mean, you plan to keep going?” he asked.

The harper was drinking her usual breakfast of black coff, known locally as kohii. “Boldly Go isn’t that far down the Concourse,” she said over the cup. “It was her next stop, and you can’t go planetside there anyway. Why should it bother you?”

“It doesn’t bother me. Only, it’s foolish; and I hadn’t thought you a foolish woman. Beside, it’s outside the Ourobouros Circuit. What if you get in trouble? What will I tell Zorba?”

“Tell him I released you from your promise.”

Donovan grunted. “I don’t think it works that way.”

Billy Chins placed a plate of freshly baked biscuits on the table between them and backed away. “Biscuits pliis sahb?” he said, cringing slightly.

“Did you look at the files I sent you last night?” Méarana asked.

The scarred man scowled, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, and looked at the clock. He raised his eyebrows.

The harper relented. “All right, you need your beauty sleep more than most. Look at them, and then we’ll talk.”

“Do biscuits pliis sahb?” Billy asked again.

Donovan turned to him and said, “Will you sit down and be quiet, boy?”

Billy ducked. “Yes, sahb. Billy sit him down jildy.” He took a seat at the table and picked a biscuit from the platter, though he nibbled it with no great sign of appetite. Méarana opened her mouth to say something, but Billy turned beseeching eyes in her direction and so she said nothing.

“I need to get out,” she said abruptly, pushing herself from the table. “I need air and trees and brooks; or I need cities and bustle. Something beside hotel apartments and liner staterooms and recycled air and water and artificial miniature streams in a damned porcelain bowl!” She strode across the room to where her harp rested on one of the chairs.

The other two stared at her openmouthed. Donovan shuddered as the Fudir took control. “Alabaster,” he said, “is plenty outdoors. Ever see the Cliffside Montage? It’s out in the Prehensile Desert past Luriname. The prehumans carved the side of an entire butte into the most intricate shapes and figures. It’s the farthest of all their artifacts from the Rift.” He fell silent as it became clear Méarana was not listening.

He tried another tack. “Boldly Go isn’t safe. The matriarchs are always looking for fresh blood, and have been known to kidnap women touristas and ‘adopt’ them. Without a Circuit Station, you couldn’t call for help.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, picking up the harp. She began to prowl the room, playing.

“What’s that you’re singing?” said Donovan.

“A song I’m working on about people who heaped together all their most precious treasures…

“and they set off to find a refuge from their oppressors in far-off California.

“You said something like that yesterday. Time is distance; or distance, time. It’s just fragments of song for now. I can’t decide whether it is a goltraí, a sad song of exile and farewell…

“Treasure fleet,” said the Fudir. “You’re building a song on Hugh’s teasing question?”

“California,” whispered Billy Chins.

Donovan turned to him. “Do you know what that means? California?”

But the khitmutgar shook his head. “No, is sounding nice. Californ-ya.” He rolled out the syllables. “What means it, the word?”

Méarana shrugged. “A place of hope, perhaps; which would make it a geantraí. It could be both, maybe. The sadness of exile followed by the triumph of hope.”

Donovan threw his napkin down on the table. “You live in a fool’s world, harper. I know what your hope is, what your ‘California’ is. But, hope dies! It must. Because it hurts too much while it lives.” And he strode out of the room and slammed the door to his sleeping quarters.

Billy ate another biscuit, stuffing the thing whole into his mouth, and chewing as he began to clear the table. On his way to the kitchenette, he paused and swallowed. “All bungim waintim?” he said open-faced to Méarana. “You pack him, the luggage?”

She nodded. “Last night.”

“Me, too. I come with. You Billy’s new memsahb.”

“Oh, Billy, you can’t help me on Boldly Go. They allow no men on the planet.”

“Maybe no help there. But maybe help…find ‘California.’ Is tramp freighter Reginão Luck pass through this week for Matriarchy. Big Board, him say so. They take him, the passengers, so Billy make book two berths.”

She looked toward the closed door. “I can’t…just walk out on him.”

“Why not?” Billy answered. “He would.”

Méarana put her harp in its case, strode quickly to her room, and fetched her bags. She returned to find Billy in the suite’s foyer with his own meager belongings. “I should buy you new clothes,” she told him. “The Kennel can’t object to that, can they?”

But the little man shook his head gravely. “Billy most objectionable man.”

They left quietly; but that night, on board the Reginão Luck, the harper sang no songs.

Traveling in the limited appointments of a tramp freighter throws one among a class of rough men and women, unaccustomed to the pampering of passengers. The harper’s presence meant an addition to their profit but they did not otherwise know what to do with her. There were no stewards.

Into the lack of service stepped Billy Chins. The Corner of Harpaloon had toughened him far more than his obsequiousness had made apparent. Out from under Donovan’s thumb, he came out of himself more. He could talk the talk that freighter crews understood, and a certain swagger began to inform his steps. He was still “mistress harp’s khansammy,” and while he never quite spoke with her as an equal, neither did he bow and scrape as he used to. He collected their meals in the freighter’s galley and served them to Méarana in her quarters, always ensuring that she had eaten before he did.

Throughout the brief transit to Boldly Go, Méarana could not shake the guilt for having abandoned the Fudir. Playing for the freighter crew lightened the melancholy and dark; but she could not quite find the joy, and she wondered if she had left a portion of her art behind her in the Hotel of the Summer Moon.

“It wasn’t right,” she told Billy the day they rendezvoused with the Freight Center in the high coopers of Boldly Go. “I spent years in the finding of him, and minutes in the leaving.”

But her servant only said, “Sometimes the search please better than the find.”

Bumboats did not drop down-system from the Freight Center, so Méarana and Billy had to wait two days for the regular shuttle run to Stranger Station, the passenger terminal. Arriving at the complex, they found the usual transient hotel, shopping arcades, and other facilities. Boldly Go was an important nexus on Electric Avenue, with connections to Sumday, Gatmander, and Alabaster as well as Siggy O’Hara; and over the next few days, while they waited for the bumboat to drop, several liners and smaller ships entered Boldly Roads for rest stop, maintenance, or terminal activities, and several more passed through “on the fly,” dropping and picking up passengers and freight and squirting and receiving comm traffic. Although not as large as Jehovah or Old ‘Saken, the interchange at Boldly Go was a prize worth plucking. There had been a war with Foreganger twenty years since and no more than five had passed since Yves Whitefield’s mercenaries had briefly seized the transit points. Without an Ourobouros station, the Cooperating Matriarchs of Boldly Go relied on their own Amazon Joint Navy—which had fended off both attempts.

Boldly Go was not a popular destination, and the bumboat carried mostly locals on leave from jobs on Stranger Station. These kept to themselves, chatting in high-pitched, excited voices. The outlanders were a mixed bag: two news agency crews, a dame from Angletar in a blue, head-to-toe borke, an Alabastrine businessman in a flowing green-yellow-red striped dashki, a High Taran in fringed cloak and kilt.

The pilot, a thickset woman with close-cropped hair, viewed her outland passengers with obvious disdain. Méarana’s long, red hair came under her disapproving eye, as did the head-to-toe borke. But the pilot reserved her greatest disdain for Billy Chins and other men onboard.

“Once we reach Charming Moon,” she said, “you bikes are off my boat! We got a nice holding facility there for males. Got urinals and everything. Whatever your business with down below, you can telepresent. And no complaining about the time lag. Be happy we don’t make you do it up here, where you’d have to wait five hours just to trade hellos.”

“Well,” said the woman in the borke, “so would your people on the ground. The inconvenience works both ways.” This earned her a scowl from the pilot.

The Alabastrine spoke up. “Boot I’m to meet with high ooficials of Bannerhook Indoostrials, oover the impoortation oof…”

“Sure you are, hooter. If you’re important enough, someone will come up to Charming. Maybe take your fee personally.” Some of the locals tittered at this sally, though Méarana did not understand the humor.

The express boat was equipped with Ramage-built Judson 253 alfven engines, rated for in-system use. So even though Stranger Station was almost thirty-two units up, the crawl was only eight days. By grabbing the strings of space and pulling herself along, the boat could “borrow” some of the local speed of space and maintain a constant acceleration of two standard gees down to Hera Orbit, where she would flip and decelerate at the same rate, “paying back” into the fabric of space. Within the vessel, counter-grids kept the apparent gravity to just over a single gee.

Once the boat was underway, the passengers unstrapped and moved about the cabin. A few headed toward the café, others remained seated and donned virtch hats so they could immerse in games or plays. In the café, the news crew from Sumday set up a game of five-handed rombaute at one of the tables. Méarana sat at a table with Billy, ignoring the scandalized glances from the Bolders. Mixing the sexes at table!

The woman in the borke joined them, introducing herself as Dame Teffna bint Howard. Méarana sent Billy to the service bar to buy three winterberry blues. Shortly, a woman from the other news crew—Great Rock News on Alabaster—joined them as well. She had a White Carthusian with a twist and a small deck salad of chaffered lettuce and wet walnuts. “Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, without awaiting an answer. She belonged to that class of people, Méarana surmised, who never imagined unwelcome.

She introduced herself as Jwana Novski. Typical of Westland Alabastrines, she was tall and lean, with coal-black skin, long thin nose, and blond hair—but she spoke without the characteristic “hoot.” When asked, she explained that news faces on her world strove for a general Gaelactic accent. “We’re quite aware that people in the older sectors don’t take us seriously because of our accent.”

The Angletar dame asked what had brought two off-world news teams to Boldly Go, and Jwana said that they were to cover the trial of a celebrated wildman named Teodorq Nagarajan. Succumbing to the wanderlust that his kind often suffered, he had worked his way into the Periphery on a trade ship and had made a name for himself on a number of frontier worlds with his antics. He had, apparently on a dare, gone down to Boldly Go, where he had been caught. “He is what we call a ‘hunk,’” said Jwana, making a fist with her right hand.

“But how could a man get down from Stranger Station?” asked Méarana. “Aren’t we screened before embarkation?”

Jwana bobbed her head toward Dame Teffna, as if to say How do we know what’s under the wool? But Méarana thought customs inspectors were not so dim that they would not look underneath!

“Oh,” said Jwana, “they can be bribed as easily as anywhere else. And if a man is hunk enough, they might even ‘solicit the bribe,’ if you know what I mean.”

The face for the other news team heard her and laughed. “If he took a bath first!”

Méarana glanced at the Angletar dame, but the woman’s eyes were hardly visible through the white grill across the eye-slot. “MO’ to the point,” said the dame in a silky contralto, “I heah that his, ah, vigah, might result in an extended sentence.”

Billy had returned by then with the drinks and sandwiches. “What strapim for man he go down?”

The Alabastrine pushed her chair a little away from the Terran. “I don’t understand your, um, accent.”

Méarana said, “Fou-Chang’s Gazetteer mentions that men are not allowed on the surface, but doesn’t say what happens if they go.”

“Oh, well,” said Dame Teffna, “there’s not much immigration to Boldly Go. So poor Teodorq will have to, ah, ‘contribute’ to their gene pool, as much as he can for as long as he can hold up.”

Billy Chins laughed. “Then why not plenty men more go down there jildy?” Jwana and the news face at the other table, who was playing dummy that hand, laughed as she rolled the dice.

“Saving only one thing,” said Dame Teffna from behind her screen. “When they finish with him, they cut his head off.”

The news faces and Billy stopped laughing.

“Surely, y’all knew that, dears,” said the dame. “It does take some of the edge off the humor.”

“Here,” said the news face from Sumday. “This is a flat of the man.

He was in Pish-Toy City on the Southern Scarp—that’s on Sumday—and he tried to rescue what he thought was a princess being abducted, and…Well, he got himself in the news back home, like everywhere else he’s been. Be a shame to shorten him.” She handed the flat to Jwana, who passed it on to Dame Teffna. “I’ve seen him. He was on Alabaster, too.” When the Angletaran sighed over the picture, Jwana leered. “I told you he was a hunk.”

Billy Chins blinked, and looked at Méarana before he handed the flat to her. “Billy Chins no like piksa men. Like piksa women.” But his eyes, the harper saw, were bright.

Méarana took the “piksa” from him and saw that it was a normal flat holo. It showed a very large man with raven, shoulder-length hair pulled back in a tail. He wore a sleeveless vest made of blue canvas. Both shoulders were intricately tattooed. He stood grinning on the top step of what Méarana thought an official building while police freed him of his bonds.

And around his neck hung a medallion in the same style as Méarana’s own.

“Billy,” Méarana told her servant. “Change of plans. This is a man I want to see.”

The news faces exchanged knowing looks and Jwana again made a fist with her right hand. “I like a woman,” she said, “who knows what she wants.”

Boldly Go’s single continent, known simply as The Mainland, rose from the One Great Sea just north of the equator. Elsewhere, scattered strings of volcanic islands marked the submarine rifts of her oceanic plates. The official history was that she had been settled exclusively by women to begin with; but other accounts claimed a later Revolution; and still others a plague affecting only males. The survivors, they said, had made a virtue of their necessity.

Whatever the beginning, the end had been the same. Across the quadrant, men told themselves that the matriarchs did not really mean what they said, and the whole planet was just waiting for the right man to come along. They were invariably surprised to learn that, yes, the matriarchs really did mean it; and whether they had been waiting for the right man or no, he was not it.

For their part, the matriarchs maintained a corps of Amazons to keep the “bad ones” of the desert from troubling the settlements, and to caution their sister matriarchs. Alliances among “Nests” were quick, heartfelt, and abandoned on a moment’s bad faith. Still, the Sisters of the Corps, though they fought one another lustily when one matriarch offended another, maintained the Amazon Joint Navy, second to none in Lafrontera. K. P. Charakorthy, the famed “Pirate of the Blue Sun,” had learned this when his fleet had had come for booty and honor and had departed with neither. It had cost Boldly Go one city—J’lala on the Purcell River—and Charakorthy his entire fleet.

Charming Moon was one of three moderate-sized bodies that stirred the One Great Sea into unusual and irregular tides. The old Commonwealth seed ships that had salted this region of the Spiral Arm had found the Sea already pregnant. Certain chemical reactions almost always tossed off amino acids and eukaryotes and sundry other bits of living matter, although they seldom elaborated further. So Boldly Go was already terraformed and waiting when the Ramage settlers made their way there.

Méarana left Billy Chins on Charming Moon with some misgiving, but comforted herself with the thought that if he had survived among the’ Loons, he could last a week or so in the relatively benign Men’s Room. He would have to pay the genetic tariff, but the harper suspected he would enjoy it.

She dropped to Boditown, capital of the Nest of Boditsya, where the Wildman was in custody. Being a curiosity as well as a prisoner, access was relatively easy to obtain, even for touristas. Méarana learned he was housed in Josang Prison, called the prison and, using her Kennel chit to get past an underling, spoke with the Warder herself. During the visi-phone conversation, she noted a display of crystal animals on the shelf behind the Warder’s desk, and so before visiting the prison in person, she purchased in an import shop a lovely crystal horse made by Wofford and Beale on New Eireann. Officially, it was not a bribe, but it did smooth the way to the Visitors’ Room.

The Visitors’ Room was entered through the main offices on Josang Avenue, a bustling thoroughfare with self-directed ground traffic. Méarana had not seen the insides of many prisons, and those only on sims and immersions, but she had not expected a brightly lit and tastefully decorated waiting room done in earth tones and furnished wth planters and chairs and tables. Bowls of patchouli and fragrant pit-roses from the Thatch Mountains gave the room a less-than-incarcerating air. The chairs were comfortable and there were no barriers between visitors and prisoners.

Méarana turned to her escort. “Not exactly escape-proof.”

The Amazon sergeant laughed. “Where on Boldly Go could he hide?”

They brought him in a few minutes later. Teodorq Nagarajan was every bit as impressive in person as he had been in the holoflat. The raven hair, the broad, white smile, the smoothly muscled chest and arms, the impression of sheer animal power very nearly overwhelmed. What she had not expected was that he would be so short. He stood at only five feet and five thumbs, a head shorter than Méarana.

Nagarajan was bare-chested and walked with a panther’s grace. Each deltoid had been tattooed with a man’s head whose beard flowed past the elbow. His pectorals were likewise adorned, though with a dragon and a tiger. When he turned—and Méarana suspected his turning was meant for display—he revealed a pair of oversized cat’s eyes on his scapulas. Thus adorned, he would appear ferocious in attack, and vigilant to any who approached from the rear.

His jailors had not taken his medallion from him, for it dangled on its golden chain, flanked by flaming dragon and growling tiger. The disc seemed to rest cupped between dragon’s claw upholding it and tiger’s paw protecting it.

The barbarian paused in the doorway, assessed the tactical situation, and eyed Méarana and the Amazon in almost a tactile manner. Then he swaggered to one of the chairs and flung himself into it, throwing his right leg over the chair arm, and propping up his chin with his left arm. “Awright, babe,” he said in passable Gaelactic. “Ain’t no bed in this room, so yuh ain’t here for that. Too bad. Dames here, they think looking purty is a crime, so yuh be the first looker I seen. Hey! We could do it in one of these here chairs, if yuh like.”

Méarana smiled. “No, thank you.”

“Hey, don’t mention it. After all, if yuh don’t ask…”

The Amazon chuckled. “You see what they’re like. That’s why we keep them off the planet.”

Méarana did not want to argue with the escort. “I wonder if he even knows why he is here.”

The Wildman grinned. “I stole the Queen’s girdle.”

“What!”

The Amazon growled. “And you set foot on the Holy Motherland.”

Nagarajan twisted in the chair so that he could see the sergeant. “Well, I couldn’t very well steal the girdle without coming planetside, now could I?”

Méarana shook her head. “Why?”

“The girldle? Oh, me and this alfven-tech on the Gopher Broke—that’s a trade ship I hitched a ride on. He told me about some ancient hero name of Herglee what pulled off these ten stunts. Which I told him doing the scuppers below the engines to pay my passage qualified as cleaning out some old horse stable. Well, another stunt was stealing this queen’s girdle. So I said, big deal; and he said, so’s why’n’t you do it; and one thing led to another, and…” He spread his arms wide. “Here I am.” He grinned and added, “We was drinking at the time.”

“You mean you took a bet with a stranger to steal the Queen’s girdle?”

“Well, it’s more like one of them belts wrasslin’ champeens wear; but…Yeah.”

He was so matter-of-fact about it that Méarana decided not to pursue the matter. “How are they treating you here?”

“Not too bad. Ol’ Johnson’s getting a workout, but after a while it’s hard to keep up.” Snicker. “Problem is, they’s all so you-gee-ell-why.”

Méarana thought she picked up about half his dialect. In some ways, it was worse than Billy’s patois. “Who is Johnson?” she asked.

Nagarajan winked and fondled his crotch. The Amazon laughed and when Méarana looked her way, the sergeant explained, “He talks about his sperm-ejector in the third person.”

And the sergeant distanced it with technical terms, but that wasn’t her business. “I notice you wear a rather striking medallion,” she said to the prisoner. “May I see it?”

The door opened behind her and the two news faces entered with their female assistants. They took seats to the side and studied their note-screens and discussed image angles and lighting while they waited for their turn. From their hesitant speech, Méarana deduced that they were ‘facing with their male technical crews on Charming Moon, and had to wait four beats for the lightspeed lag. To the harper’s surprise, the door opened again and Dame Teffna bint Howard also entered.

“Oh! You were so right, Jwana,” the blue-garbed woman purred. “He is a hunk.”

Nagarajan leaned toward Méarana and spoke as if they were old friends. “That must be one ugly babe.”

“Why so, sahb Nagarajan?”

“Hey, call me Teddy. Only one reason for a gal to cover herself up like that.”

“She might prefer to hide her beauty to avoid harassment.”

The Wildman considered that possibility. “One buck gets yuh five yer wrong. Smart money’s on ugly.”

Considering what had happened the last time Nagarajan had made a bet, Méarana was not about to take him up on it. He was quite capable of leaping the chairs and disrobing the Angletar dame on the spot. She did not ask him what a “buck” was. “I was wondering where you had gotten that medallion.”

Of all the questions the Wildman expected to be asked, that one seemed pretty far down the list. He lifted the medallion and studied it as if he had never seen it before. The disc was ruby red and yellow amethysts had been worked into it like the flames of a fire, reaching up around and through it. Minute diamond dust suggested sparks when the light caught it. “This? I taken it off a dead Nyaka warrior.”

“Ah. And do you know where he got it?”

The massive shoulders shrugged. “Uh, no? He was dead?”

“You’re sure.”

“I killed him, didn’t I? They stay dead when I do that.”

“Where do these Nyakas live?”

“Some boonie planet out in the Burnt-Over District. Why you so interested?”

“Do you know the name of the planet, or how to get there?”

Nagarajan’s hand shot out like lightning, and seized hold of the leather thong by which Méarana’s own medallion hung.

But Méarana was not called Swiftfingers for no good cause, and her knife had leapt from its sleeve and hovered now underfisted a scant thumbwidth from the Wildman’s left eye.

Dame Teffna and the two news crews fell silent. The Amazon sergeant stood away from the wall and her hand had dropped to her stunner. But she made no move to draw it.

A frozen moment passed. Then a smile blossomed on Nagarajan’s face. “No harm, Sarge. The lady and me was just showing off our jewelry.” He tucked the medallion back into Méarana’s blouse. He had barely glanced at it, but the harper suspected he had examined it quite carefully in that instant. He was a man quick with his senses. He smiled again, catlike. “Yuh need to put the killer in your eye,” he murmured so she alone could hear. “A man sees in your eye that yuh ain’t gonna stick him first, he maybe feels too cocky. I ain’t no enemy, so I tell yuh this. Never threaten your enemy and let him be. Better t’ just let him be and forget the threats.”

Méarana made the knife disappear. Nagarajan sat back in his chair. The leg once more swung over the chair arm. “So, you come in from the District, too?” he continued in a low voice. “An’ now you can’t find your way back? No worries. I got all the roads mem’rized.” He tapped his temple with a finger like a tent peg. “Oh, wait. One problemo. The memory’s inside my head, which is gonna get lopped off the next couple days. That’s why those ghouls…” He meant the news faces. “…come to gawk. Heads roll around Lafrontera like bowling balls, but when is it a head so handsome as mine?”

“I’m surprised they haven’t shortened you already,” said Méarana. “Your modesty is hard to take.”

Nagarajan guffawed and slapped the arm of the chair. “But they still wanna know what I done with the Queen’s girdle, which I ain’t telling. An’ no, before you ask, they won’t let me go if’n I do. But they’re getting tired of asking, and are just about ready to cut things short, so to speak. Tell yuh what. You’re a harper by your nails. I want yuh to sing my story, so I don’t die forever. Come back tomorrow after these ghouls are done and I tell yuh chapter an’ verse on the Exploit of the Girdle.”

“And you’ll tell me how to find the source of these medallions?”

The barbarian smiled. “Whaddaya think?”

When Méarana stood to leave, Dame Teffna did, too. She embraced each of the news faces, bidding each good fortune with their interviews. “Ta,” she said, “I shan’t stay about to have that beast sticking his paw between my breasts! My dear,” she purred to the harper as she caught up, “that must have been simply awful.”

On Josang Avenue, Méarana hailed a jitney, one of the open-sided electric cars that cruised the streets of Boditown. “Are you staying at the Hotel Clytemnestra?” Teffna asked. “May I share the taxi? Oh, thank you.” She lowered herself onto the bench beside the harper and snapped open a fan hand-painted with chrysanthemums and waved it briskly before the grill in her hood. “Terribly arid here. Would you like some lotion? This heat cannot be good for your skin.”

“I imagine,” said Méarana dryly, “that it is hotter in there than it is out here.”

The taxi driver had just settled into her seat and, hearing this remark, barked a short laugh. “One gold quarter-piece,” she said. “For the both of you together.”

Méarana opened the scrip belted to her waist, but Dame Teffna laid a hand on her wrist. “Do pa’don me, dear.” Then to the driver, “Twenty minims in Venishànghai ducats, or three-tenths of a Gladiola Bill.”

The driver made a face. “I lose on the arbitrage, ladies. Not enough foreign currency to make it worthwhile. Half a ducat. I won’t take Bills.”

“Half a ducat! My dear, that is terribly steep. Perhaps thirty minims five.”

The driver considered that. “You could walk,” she suggested.

Teffna sighed. “Oh, very well. Forty. And done.”

“Forty each,” said the driver.

The Angletaran laughed. “Done.”

The taxi jerked away from the curb and headed east on Josang. “So, you went in to see the foreign bike, did you?” the driver said conversationally. “He pretty as he looks on the news-bank? No wonder everyone wants to ‘visit’ with him. They say Wildmen have bigger sperm ejectors than most bikes. That true?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Méarana. “I went there to interview him.”

“Interview,” said the driver. “That what they call it on your world? Where you from, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Dangchao,” said the harper.

“Angletar,” said the borked woman.

“Never heard of them. How do you handle bikes there?”

“I’m sorry,” said Méarana. “Do you mean ‘men’?”

“Is that the Gaelactic word? I guess so.”

“On Angletar, we keep them in club houses,” said Dame Teffna.

“Ours are free-range,” Méarana explained simply.

Dame Teffna turned to her. “Oh, you can’t let them run loose, dear. You must understand the distinct duties of the two sexes. Men talk about God and politics, and kill each other now and then—usually because of the talk. Women keep everyone fed and laugh at the men. That’s why we wear these borkes—so they can’t see us laughing.”

Boldly Go did not depend on tourism. Consequently, no swarm of functionaries greeted them at the hotel, and there was an interval when Méarana and Teffna stood alone in the hotel’s drop-off area. Méarana turned to the other woman and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Donovan, have you lost what little of your mind you have left?”

The Angletaran managed somehow to convey an attitude of social offense without a single part of her body showing. It was all in the posture and in the tone of voice. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

“What ‘on Earth’? Who talks like that? Why else hide under that, that body-tent? It’s an obvious way to conceal yourself.”

“A little too obvious, wouldn’t you say?” the dame murmured. “Do you believe them so obtuse that they would not ‘check under the hood’?” And so saying, the dame lifted the face-veil of her borke.

And the face was undeniably female: the cheeks were fuller and more rounded; the forehead vertical and lacking in brow bossing. The eyebrows were arched and sat above the brow ridge rather than on it. And though the mouth was wider and the chin more square than was the female norm, the diversity of humankind throughout the Spiral Arm more than covered such variations. Almost, Méarana apologized.

Except that the face was also undeniably Donovan’s. If Donovan had a sister, she would look like this. Or, more accurately, if he had a crazy old aunt in the attic. Teffna waited with an expression very much like the Fudir’s smirk for the harper to comment.

Méarana closed her eyes and took in a long, slow breath. “I saved myself five ‘bucks,’ anyway. What if they ‘look in the trunk’?”

“What do you usually find stashed away in the boot,” said the dame, lowering her face-veil once more. “Rusted old tools.”

Dame Teffna had scoured her hotel room for intrusive devices upon checking in and did so again. “No reason to suppose the authorities have any interest in ‘Teffna,’” she said, “so the odds are against the room being bugged, but I’d rather learn that precautions were unneeded than to learn that they were.”

It was a single room, tastefully done, but in that perfunctory manner that catered only to unmindful businesss travelers. There was a bed, a desk with an interface and holostage. A comfortable desk chair and a more comfortable reading chair with a gooseneck screen. A copy of the local holy book. Méarana waited until the cleansing ritual was completed before blurting out, “How did you manage it?”

Teffna sat on the edge of the bed. “You left a trail, dear. I checked with ticketing and…”

“No. I mean…this.” She waved a hand at her face. “If I hadn’t already known Donovan, I’d never have seen the resemblance.”

“Oh. He and the Fudir handed over control. What else could they have done?”

“But…Who are you?”

“They call me the Silky Voice. You can call me Donna, if you like. It’s a title women use on Angletar and would cover nicely if you slip up.”

“So, how did you…” She waved her hand again.

“Oh…” She touched her forehead in the center. “I live straight back, in an apartment the size of an almond—the hypothalamus. I have control of the glandular system, and that regulates basic drives and emotions, promotes growth and sexual identity, controls body temperature, assists in the repair of broken tissue, and helps generate energy. I’m the nurse.”

“‘Promotes sexual identity’” Méarana suggested.

Donna spread her arms in a familiar gesture. “Those who chopped up Donovan’s brain thought there might be call for an agent’s seductive side. Honey, they got me.”

“You do sound more seductive than Donovan,” Méarana allowed.

“The fourth Tyrant of Valency sounded more seductive than Donovan. I don’t mean sexual seduction. For various reasons, I couldn’t pull that off. I mean the sort of thing that your mother was so good at. Persuading people, getting them to go along with her plans.”

“I would have said your features were ‘strong’ or ‘handsome.’”

“My dear, you tell a woman that when you have no finer adjectives on hand. There’s an enzyme that converts testosterone to estradiol. Certain fatty tissues swell or shrink, but the bones don’t change. So a bit of water retention obscures the brow ridge and moves the eyebrows north. The laryngeal prominence softens because the angle of the cartilage shifts. The testicles, ah…I believe ‘recede’ is the proper term; but they’re still there. Look, do you really want to know all this? It took several days of stretching and swelling and contraction; and it hurt, a lot.”

“And here you are. I take it you read the story of the Treasure Fleet.”

“‘…And so the Fleet departed,’” Teffna recited, “‘stuffed with all the wonders of the Commonwealth, her berths filled with the sleeping settlers, carrying the hopes of all true sons of Terra. They set their course on the Rigel Run and far-off California. But though the loyal folk of the Commonwealth waited and waited, nothing was ever heard from them again; and in the end the Commonwealth submitted.’ But the Commonwealth was long dead when that was written down on Friesing’s World. Why do you think it is any more than a fable?”

“Because you were ready to give up, and now you’re here.”

Donna rose and crossed the room, where she fiddled with her sundries on the vanity. “Is that the only reason I would have followed?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Do you suppose there ever was a Treasure Fleet?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Donna turned around in surprise. “Why not?”

“It only matters if Mother thought there was, and went looking for it. Remember the message Sofwari left on Harpaloon? We’ll find her down that path, whether a treasure lies at the end of it or not.”

“If you find her at the other end, would that not be treasure enough?”

The remark astonished the harper. But perhaps the Silky Voice had a gentler perspective on such things than Donovan. “I think…I think they had found a secret road somewhere in a place called California and they hoped to create a safe haven—colonies far to Rimward of the prehuman zone, from which they could strike the prehuman heartland from the rear.”

“And this secret road led them to the Wild? By the gods, girl! No wonder they call it the Wild! What could be wilder than such speculations?”

“But if there is…No wonder Mother went in search of it. What if there is a remnant out there of old Commonwealth technology? Something that would ‘ward us from the Confederation for aye.’”

The older woman grunted. “Like it warded the old Commonwealth? A great deal of hope to place in a couple of maybes and a fable.”

But Méarana was adamant. “Could a fable keep my mother from returning home? She is no fool. She must have known something else. There is something still out there. A Lost Colony—decayed, or devolved, or defunct—and this…” She brandished the medallion. “This is connected somehow.”

“Enter the Wildman, Teodorq Nagarajan.”

“Yes. He knows where these medallions come from and tomorrow he’ll tell me.”

Donna laughed—and Méarana thought she heard an echo of Donovan in the laugh. “He will tell you nothing. Your mother was no fool? Neither is he. What is your quest to him?”

“But, he told me…”

“He told you to come back tomorrow. His reasons are teleological. They are formed to an end—his end. He considers how he might delay that. So, he has not told the Boldlys where he hid the girdle. They delay the execution, hoping to learn. He tells you he knows where your medallion comes from. Maybe you have influence and can free him, or delay the execution. He doesn’t know that you do, but he doesn’t know that you don’t, either, and so the bet is worth the flyer. I don’t doubt he’ll play some similar game with those news people from Alabaster and Sumday He’ll put off his day of doom as long as he can with things like that. He’ll try to give everyone he comes in contact with some reason to stay the axe. He’s a clever sod. Don’t let that barbarian simplicity fool you.”

“Then, we have to rescue him.”

“Do we? Why?”

“Because he does seem to know something we need. Because being a man is not a crime.”

“It’s a crime here.”

Méarana looked the faux-woman in the eye and cocked her head.

Donna shrugged. “I never said I wasn’t a criminal.”

Méarana leaned her elbows on the writing table and rested her chin in her hands. “Now, how do we break him out? Security seemed rather loose. He could overpower the sergeant and walk out the front door.”

The old woman gazed toward the ceiling. “And how do you plan to take him off-planet? Buy tickets on the sky ferry to Charming Moon, maybe?”

“That’s Donovan speaking. There’s no need for sarcasm. Billy can rent a ship, bring it down to some agreed rendezvous, and haul us off. And then…”

“And then eight days’ crawl at least up to Stranger Station—where the the station police for the Joint Matriarchal Council will simply ignore our fugitive asses…? I don’t think so.”

“But actually, I was thinking of taking him legally,” Méarana said. “Maybe I can use my Kennel chit to commandeer him. That was how Greystroke pulled you off New Eireann.”

“You have a fairly broad definition of ‘legally.’ And while I admire the flexibility, remember your are not a Pup. I don’t know that the matriarch’s courts would hand him over to an ‘authorized representative’ with an expense chit.”

“You have a chit, too. Maybe if both of us…”

“Dame Teffna doesn’t have a chit, especially one that identifies her as Donovan buigh of Jehovah.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, dear. Oh. What you need is a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

“A what?”

“A notarized League warrant, chopped by a Hound.”

Méarana slumped. “Where would we get one? Even if Greystroke is still on Yubeq…”

“He is.”

“…a swift-boat would need weeks to reach Siggy O’Hara and queue a message on the Circuit, and weeks for the O’Harans to swift-boat the answer back here…”

“Let me think.”

“And that’s assuming Greystroke gets the message and responds right away.”

“I said let me think!” Donna strode across the modest room and sat once more on the bed, where she fell into closed-eye silence. Méarana heard the other woman mutter under her breath in a tone that she recognized as Donovan’s. She rose and padded silently to the other side of the room, where she drew the curtain aside.

The sun was setting behind the hotel, throwing long shadows forward into Boditown, as if night were advancing on it in columns, like an army. It was a small town. Smaller than Jenlùshy, much smaller than Pròwenshwai, likely no larger than Preeshdad. But it was less ramshackle than either Preeshdad or Jenlùshy, the buildings solid, wider than they were tall, embracing central courtyards. Trees were plentiful, at least along the winding streets and in several parks visible from her vantage point, though sparser toward the red-lit horizon, where housing gave way to rolling grasslands and security bastions against the bad ones.

She heard Donovan say, “But we dare not draw attention to ourselves. We’ve only got the one.” And she turned from the window to see Dame Teffna rise from the bed and go to the ‘face on the writing desk.

“Do you have something?” she asked.

Teffna pulled from her scrip a standard brain, which she inserted into the receptor. “While I was changing into my dainty self back on Siggy O’Hara,” she said, “I sent a Circuit message to Greystroke. He heard back from Kàuntusulfalúghy, by the way. Sofwari last contacted the College of Scholars about eight weeks after Bridget ban dropped from sight. He was on Ampayam, heading out the Gansu Corridor to collect samples in the Wild. As far as they know, he never came back.”

“Then we should heigh for Ampayam as fast as e’er we can!”

“Don’t slip the leashes yet. First things first. There’s more than one world out the Gansu Corridor. Greystroke can’t leave Yubeq just yet, but he did send Little Hugh to Ampayam to suss things out. He also sent me a warrant.”

“A warrant! Then we can get Teodorq out of prison!”

“We could…except the warrant doesn’t say ‘Teodorq Nagarajan’ in the right places. I’ll have to make some changes the Gray One might not approve of. But if it works, we’ll be well away from here before the paperwork clears the Kennel. No Circuit station here.”

“Can we have it ready by tomorrow? I already set up an appointment.”

Dame Teffna shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s many years since I’ve practiced the skills. A League warrant is not the easiest thing to alter, and this is one world where I cannot call on the Brotherhood. There are any number of sisters in the Brotherhood, but I’d rather not lean on divided loyalties.”

Méarana had never seen Donovan so conflicted before. “I understand. If you’re caught…”

“If you are caught. I can’t present the warrant. My chit identifies me as Donovan, remember? That’s why I’m worried. If you present it and it doesn’t pass muster, then you’re for the women’s prison. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Vagosana! It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

The harper suddenly understood. “Donna…Who was the warrant for?”

Without a word, Dame Teffna turned the screen of the face so that Méarana could see it. She leaned closer.

The warrant was “to secure the person of Donovan buigh of Jehovah and deliver him to the custody of Greystroke Hound or his Pup.”

Méarana turned to look into Donovan’s eyes. For once, they were steady. For once, all of Donovan was looking back. “This is…”

“I promised Zorba I would take care of you,” Teffna muttered. “I had to catch up and drop to Boldly Go with you. I had to visit the prison with you. I had to be close enough in case the bad ones came looking for fresh blood for their cloning tanks. Rama-rama!” She struck the desk. “What if one these tarka devis harm you? What I tell then Uncle Zorba, hey?”

Méarana reached out but Donna flinched, so she touched the screen gently instead. “This was your ‘get out of jail free card.’ In case your were exposed…”

“I would find some way of telling you where to find it and you’d throw some serious Kennel weight around and spring me.”

“So if you alter it to spring Teodorq…”

“Greystroke wouldn’t like writing a second one. He stretched a point to write this one. The Kennel doesn’t give them out as party favors.”

The harper shook her head. “You can’t take the chance. We can pick up clues to the medallion elsewhere.”

“Of course. But where? We could wander Lafrontera for years before we stumble on them. Besides,” and he entered a command even as he was speaking, for the Fudir’s skills at forgery did not require the Silky Voice’s silence, “Nagarajan deserves to be rescued for his own sake.”

Méarana cocked her head. “He does? Why?”

“He staged a panty raid on an entire planet on a drunken bet. A man like that belongs on a hopeless quest.”

They sat in a drab outdoor café whose striped canvas awning fended off the blistering midday sun. Lazy fans stirred the tepid air. The white strap-chairs and tables, the “spressaba,” and other tattered and faded equipment seemed to have come from their packing crates already sun-worn and in need of repair. Dame Teffna wore a white borke; Méarana, a more dignified cut. She had programmed the anycloth to a trim powder-blue coverall with tabbed pockets and epaulets. It was not a uniform, certainly not a Pup’s uniform, but it suggested that it might almost be one. She wore no insignia or patches. That would have been pushing matters too far. The Kennel would, in the Fudir’s words, “throw the book at her” if she crossed the line from “special representative” to “impersonating a Hound.”

“But,” said Dame Teffna, “the Boldlys may not be too clear on what a ‘special representative of the Kennel’ can do. So act as if it means more than it does. Act like the true quill. Show confidence, but try not to lie more than is necessary. The Kennel really does want to learn where Bridget ban was going when she…Where she was going. So it’s not a lie to say that the Kennel wants Nagarajan as a material witness.”

“Donna,” said Méarana, “I know how to act like my mother.”

The Fudir wagged his head. “I wish it were me going in. If they detect the forgery…”

“All the more reason why you can’t. Donna, I appreciate the risk you’ve taken for me.”

Dame Teffna lifted her coffee and the tasse vanished behind her face-veil. “What risk?” she said as she put it down. “You’re the one they’ll seize if my handiwork fails. That’s the hard part, you know. It’s not hard to risk yourself. It’s risking others that gnaws at you.” She toyed a moment with the empty tasse. “What time is your appointment?”

Méarana glanced at the Salon of Justice across the street. A heavy, three-storey building, it consisted of a central cupola and two wings. One wing housed the prosecuting magistrates, the other wing housed the police and their laboratories.

“It wouldn’t do to be late.”

“I know that.”

“Does Judge Trayza know why you made the appointment?”

“I told her dark it was Kennel business and let it go at that.”

“Good. Good. That helps create an air of importance. ‘Need to know,’ and all that.”

“I’m no fool.” With a brisk, snapping motion she opened a tunic pocket and pulled out a timepiece of the Die Bold style. “It’s time for me to go.”

“Is that set to metric time?” Die Bold and the other Old Planets famously preserved their ancient dodeka time scales in the face of not uncommon confusions with other League worlds.

“All three,” she said. “Doo-dah time, Taran Green Time, and it picks local time off the planetary tock.” She meant the satellite system that transmitted the standard times around Boldly Go. “Stop fretting. I’ll be fine.”

Judge Trayza Dorrajenfer was a tall, graceful woman, elegantly dressed in a flowing dark-blue robe and a gold filigreed circlet binding her hair. Her office was an airy room on the first floor of the north wing, adjacent to her courtyard. Everything was done in plaster or plastic or metal, except the desk and chair, which were wood imported from Kwinnfer in the forested northeast. In the corner stood a rack of spools that Méarana took to be law books. A small fountain emitted a fine spray that kept the room cooler than it otherwise would have been.

The judge came from behind her desk and took Méarana’s proffered hand between both of hers. “Welcome to my chambers, Méarana Harper,” she said, guiding her to a pair of shapeless bags which, to the harper’s surprise, turned out to be chairs. When she sank into the one indicated, it conformed itself to her contours.

“My, these are comfortable, your worship.” “Please. Call me Trayza. You’ve never seen smarticle chairs?” “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen them. I’m surprised to find them here—”

“There may not be another set on all of Boldly Go. These are imported from Valency, where they are all the fashion. The smarticles are micron-sized particles, I am told, that use the same sort of techne as any cloth. That is an any cloth outfit you are wearing, isn’t it?”

Méarana had the judge pegged now. She had been born to money, and while she had the graciousness of her class, she also had more than her share of its conceits. In her first few sentences, she had alluded to her wealth in that indirect manner the wealthy had—There may not be another set on all of Boldly Go—and put Méarana in her place. Bolt-for-bolt, any-cloth was expensive, but a full, dedicated wardrobe was the mark of class.

“Why, yes,” she told the judge, fingering a sleeve. “Where I go, it can be important to travel light. On my estate on Dangchao…”

“Dangchao belongs to Die Bold, does it not?” the judge asked. “I’ve always wondered if there were some ancient connection between your world and ours.”

Méarana doubted that, but she would not secure Nagarajan by debating demographics with the judge. “I really don’t know much about the migration era. There is a science-wallah drifting about the Periphery collecting facts that may answer that question. I think he may have stopped on Charming Moon to swab cheek samples.”

“Him? Everyone thought he was mad. There was a woman, about ten or twelve weeks earlier, asking about him. She was a League marshall, so when this wallah bike showed up, we thought she had meant to take him into cutody for his own safety.”

“The League marshall—the Hound—did you meet her?”

“Me?” Trayza laughed. “I am only a simple servant of the courts. We don’t see many Hounds here, so everyone was chattering about her. There was talk of a reception. But she landed in Nest Admantine on the western plateau, and the bad ones had cut the monorail line out of the mountains. So…What may I do for you, mistress harp?”

Méarana handed over the brain and a print copy of the warrant. “I have been requested by Greystroke Hound to secure a prisoner in your custody.”

The judge did not glance at the print copy. “Let me guess. The Wild-man, Nagarajan. You visited him two days ago.” Méarana was not surprised. Boditsya did not run a surveillance state, but that did not mean they lacked the means to discover where she had gone since landing.

“Yes,” said Méarana. “We—that is, the Kennel needs him as a material witness in a case.”

The judge grunted and held the print copy of the warrant. “What is the case, if I may ask.”

“Ah, this is embarrassing…”

The other woman made a face. “No need to rub my nose in it.”

“They don’t tell me everything, either,” Méarana said to take out some of the sting. “The warrant came to Siggy O’Hara because I was coming this way.” Donovan often said that the truth was the best sort of lie, and she understood now what he had meant.

“The Kennel is using harpers now?”

Méarana shrugged. “You know how thin the Kennel is spread. They often use auxiliaries for minor tasks. I happened to be in the right place, and I had a special advantage.”

“Really. What advantage does a harper have for the Kennel?”

“My mother is a Hound. You almost met her when she was here.”

The judge retreated a little in her bag chair. “The case involves her?”

“Yes, but you will understand that I can tell you no more than that.” Leave the matter vague, the harper told herself. Bridget ban had come to Boldly Go asking after Sofwari. Later, Sofwari appears. Then the Wild-man comes, apparently on a feckless adventure. Shortly after, the daughter of Bridget ban comes with a warrant chopped by Greystroke demanding the person of that very Wildman. Greystroke could not have known of Nagarajan’s imprisonment when he wrote the warrant. And that meant the Kennel really had intended to pick him up before he had even landed on Boldly Go. Perhaps the Wildman had deliberately gotten himself imprisoned to escape the Hounds—only to find he had jumped from the kettle to the fire.

Méarana let these thoughts circulate unspoken. It was a tissue of misdirection, and a tissue will bear not too much weight. Such things are more persuasive the less they are stressed, and when they hold just enough truth to give them substance.

Judge Trayza rose from her chair. “This is not something we like to do. It sets a bad example to other bikes, that they can come down here and get away with it.”

Méarana also rose. The judge would not contest the warrant. No one begins a refusal with such protestations. She would have to justify her compliance first. The harper followed the judge to the desk, where she took a chair designed to subordinate those who sat in it.

“I will release Nagarajan to you on a single condition; namely, that when the Kennel is finished with him, he will be returned to us to complete his original sentence.”

Meaning that the Nest of Boditsya fully intended to execute the man for the crime of being a man. Méarana unhesitatingly agreed. The important thing at the moment was to secure his person. She would decide what to do with it once she had it.

Trayza considered the harper. “Will you be able to retain control of him? It does neither the Kennel nor the Nest any good if turning him over means turning him loose.”

Méarana emptied herself the way her mother had taught her and sat very still, allowing her eyes alone to speak. Let them see the killer in your eyes, Nagarajan had advised her. “My mother is a Hound,” she said when the right amount of time had passed. “She taught me certain things, and that I know these things may certain you. I have people awaiting above on Charming Moon, and between here and Stranger Station, to where might a man escape?” All this in sweetly reasoned tones. Not sarcastic; certainly not threatening. But with just enough condescension to carry the conviction.

The judge dropped her eyes and muttered that she hadn’t meant to suggest that the Kennel would assign a task to one unqualified to bear it. She plugged the brain into her desktop ‘face. “You’ll need this requisition for the chief Warder at the…” She hesitated, unplugged the brain and reinserted it. “…at the prison, and you’ll have to sign a re…” She replugged the brain a second time. “…a receipt.”

“Of course.” Méarana refused to look at the balky insert. Donovan had warned her that his alterations might not pass the quality control checks.

The third time, the insert loaded up and the harper, with some effort, did not show relief. The judge checked certain fields on the screen against the corresponding fields on the paper copy, pursed her lips; then with a small sigh of annoyance added her own proviso about returning the prisoner once he was no longer needed. She did the same thing by hand to the paper copy, and Méarana initialed and dated the amendment.

Give her anything she wants, Donovan had advised, so long as we leave with the Wildman.

“I wish I knew what this was in aid of,” Judge Trayza said as she handed over the franked warrant and the release form.

Méarana took the paperwork and the brain and shook the judge by the hand. “No. You don’t,” she assured the woman. “There is one dead and one missing already in this affair. The less any of us know, the better.” Make it sound mysterious; make it sound deadly. Make it sound like Judge Trayza Dorrajenfer of the Nest of Boditsya did not want to inquire further.

On the shuttle to Charming Moon, Teodorq Nagarajan sat between Méarana the Harper and Dame Teffna bint Howard. He wore a pair of manacles, courtesy of Josang Prison, and grinned at the stares he received from the other passengers. A great many Boldlys resented his temporary escape from the death sentence. So, too, had the news faces from Alabaster and Sumday. “We came all this distance,” Jwana had complained at the hotel, “and now there’s no story.”

But Nagarajan was content with that. He would rather Novski gripe at his good luck than exult in his bad. He nudged Méarana with an elbow after the shuttle had entered free fall. “I knew you’d come back for me, babe. Just couldn’t let me go to waste.”

“Please,” said Méarana, “don’t make me change my mind.”