Up Jim River

IX. ON THE VERY EDGE OF SKIES

Gatmander’s sun lies more distant than most and he gleams in her sky as a blue-white diamond. Young Gat women are known to hold their splayed fingers to the sky and imagine the sunset in an engagement ring. Daylight on Gatmander would be called dusk most anywhere else.

She should be a colder world than she is. But her sun is hotter and compensates somewhat for his distance by his temperament. Partly, too, being a large world, Gatmander squeezes her core like a woman hugging herself for warmth. In consequence, her heart seethes from the pressing love of gravity, and some of this grills her surface. And partly, too, the water vapor in her air seizes and hoards what heat her star and core grant from above and below. This vapor falls as snow for almost half the year and melts grudgingly in a summer more like spring. The species planted by the ancient terraforming arks had made the best of a bad deal and have adapted with admirable dispatch. Behaviors changed, features were bent to new uses, and new features appeared in the blink of a biological eye as the god Lamarck awoke sleeping “junk genes” to tackle new environmental conditions.

Taken all for all, she is a bleak world. Tundra in the high latitudes, taiga over the temperate zones, oak and maple in the tropics. A bare million souls live in no more than a few score cities, with maybe another two million scattered in towns and villages across the Canda landmass. The other continent, Zobiir, splays half her bulk across the north pole and supports nothing but massive glaciers and a precarious research base on her Southern Bay. The people are friendly enough, but embrace a kind of enthusiastic fatalism. Their literature runs heavily to huddled, lonely women yearning for hot but distant lovers.

The harper and the scarred man landed with servant and bodyguard in train at the groundside spaceport near Gudsga, which was what passed for the planetary capital. Gatmander supported a single planetary government, mainly because no one saw reason to support more than one. That was theory. In practice, each city governed its own hinterland of towns and villages and sent a couple of boys to Gudsga to sit in a council they called the loyal shirka.

Passengers unboarded the shuttle by means of mobile stairs and walked across the field to the terminal. It was morning and the sun was behind them, casting bluish shadows across the field. The sky itself was lightening from black to gunmetal gray.

The terminal was little more than a large shed, and there were no formalities to their entry. Gats saw no reason to bar either those mad enough to come or sane enough to leave. The sign across the entry read: welcome to gatmander: the end of the road. Méarana wondered if the Gats had meant that the way it sounded, or if they had intended only a bald, factual description. For it was here that that Yellow Brick Road and the Gorky Prospect, having combined into the Grand Concourse, came to an end, and ships had to circle halfway around Black Diamond Star to reach the Wilderness Trail into the Wild.

In theory, this should have made her a lively debarkation port, with companies of settlers moving through, drinking the local vawga, buying last-minute trinkets, seeking last-minute joys. The planet could have called herself “Last Chance” with some justice. But she had become a cul de sac on Electric Avenue. The worlds out the Wilderness Road were more advanced than those along the Gansu Corridor. Many had large populations and, though their technology was primitive, colonizing them would be problematical.

Billy found something akin to a hotel, called a “bed-and-breakfast.” Hotels were not a major industry on Gatmander. She held few attractions for off-planet visitors, and native Gats were homebodies. Consequently, some families earned a little hard currency by renting out rooms and serving meals to strangers.

The next morning the family served them breakfast; or, as they put it in the peculiar back-handed syntax of the Gat born and bred: “Unto us there is an occasion for breakfast.” Méarana immediately understood why the room and board was so inexpensive. There was barely enough board to count as a splinter. A bowl of some coarse-ground cereal called “fortitude” liberally greased with dollops of butter and syrup and washed down with a fatty milk called chacha. Méarana supposed the cereal was called “fortitude” or “grit” because one needed that virtue to consume it.

She was alone in her fastidiousness. Billy usually resigned himself to whatever food he was given; and the Fudir was, as always, indifferent. Teodorq seemed actually to enjoy the meal and asked for seconds, and Méarana made note to avoid the Wildman’s native cuisine.

Their hosts, sahb and memsahb Dukover were neither friendly nor unfriendly. They smiled at the right times and spoke the pleasant formalities, but their attitude was summed up in the Gatmander hospitality motto: “Guests Happen.”

“These Gat-fellas,” said Billy Chins later that morning as they walked toward the mercantile district, “they talk such-much funny-style.”

Teodorq laughed, but before Billy could frown, he pointed down a side street and said, “The shop’s down that way.”

The wind was chill and blustery, channeled by the dark, narrow lanes between the warehouses. It carried a touch of sleet. Gatmander’s long winter had ended, and its long spring was underway. Flower buds peered suspiciously from plots and pots; krunsaus watched for shadows. The world had a long orbit and would be some while making up its mind. When they turned up Chandler’s Lane the wind blasted them so that, even wrapped in the “snow-cloak” she had been loaned, Méarana shivered.

Or did she shiver from hope? Teodorq had promised no more than the name of the world from which the medallion had come; and the shop-owner might not know even that; but despite all past disappointments, she had come to expect some great breakthrough. But what of it? Were the outcome a sure thing, hope would be superfluous.

Teodorq paused before a weapons shop and studied the window holo display with longing. “Remember what I told yuh, babe,” he said. “I can’t be no bodyguard without I got weapons to guard yuh with.”

“Later, Teddy,” said the harper. “After you’ve led us to the shop.”

She moved on and the Wildman followed. The Fudir hesitated. The Pedant wanted to study the weapons and the Brute concurred. Thus did hunger for knowledge and lust for combat find common ground. Between them, the two influenced the memory and the animal body, and so the scarred man forgot for a moment where he was going and his body turned to the display.

A variety of weapons were mounted on stands and pedestals: automatic pellet guns, revolving cylinder pellet guns, electric teasers, induction nerve dazers, brass knuckles, daggers and knives in an alarming range of shapes and sizes. A two-handed broadsword with an elaborately jeweled pommel leaned against the side of the display. Hand-lettered cards announced the provenance of the weapons. Zhenghou Shuai. Ākramaņapīchē. Kaņţu. Enjrun. Worlds he had never heard of. Worlds of the Wild. Peoples to whom the crafting of a weapon was a work of art. Gloriously filigreed, garishly pastelled, engraved, burnished, some, indeed, could be intended only for ceremonial use. That saber, for example. That automatic. But for the others, their form followed their function.

Beautiful, the Brute sighed—delighted by the craftsmanship or by the functionality, who could say?

All of the pellet weapons are from Ākramaņapīchē and Kaņţu, said the Pedant. The more utilitarian edged weapons are from Enjrun, as well as some muzzle-loaders and flintlocks. Electronic weapons are only from Zhenghou Shuai.

And you know what that means, the Sleuth whispered. It’s an elementary deduction.

But since he would not draw it, the scarred man remained bemused. Pedant said, Must you always show off?

Oh, look who’s talking. Are you sure you’re the memory and not the ego?

Oh, that’s your job.

The Sleuth sniffed and dropped out, and the scarred man found himselves staring at a catalog of weaponry. Then the Pedant dropped out, and he forgot what the catalog had been.

“I hate it when those two assholes quarrel,” muttered the Fudir.

You could try being nicer to them.

They started to turn away, but Inner Child kept their eyes glued to the display. «Those could hurt us, if we ever found ourselves on the wrong side of them.»

“You’re supposed to be cautious and wary,” Donovan growled, “not paralyzed with fear. You’re useless.”

This time he did turn away—to find that Billy Chins had lingered.

“Sahb let Wildman have such-much weapons? Who guard us against our guard?”

“Billy,” said the scarred man, “we are truly awed by the depth of your trust.”

“Trust be better found hiding neath caution,” the khitmutgar replied.

“How much sambai long—I mean, what protection are broke old-fella you and liklik meri if the muscle turns on us?”

“I’m more concerned that he’ll try to run out on us. He’s not atangku, only a contract worker. To some of these Wildmen, ‘honor’ means everything. To others, it means nothing.” He clapped a hand to Billy’s shoulder. “They practice taqila. If you’re not of their tribe, they’ll pretend to be your friend, look you straight in the eye, and lie like hell.”

“Master sahb lucky, then,” said Billy with a wide grin. “Eyes belong-you never straight enough look into!”

Donovan directed a playful swat to Billy’s head just as Méarana turned about and pointed from up the lane. “Teddy’s found the place!”

CHENG-BOB SMERDROV’S IMPORT-EXPORT, SPECIALISTS IN WILDWORK, was a large, barnlike structure formed of “grown wood.” Its bins and shelves held the most chaotic concatenation of gimcrack and miscellany this side of Jehovah’s Starport Sarai. Cheng-bob himself was a bear of a man, bushy of beard and ruddy of cheek. His eyelids were folded at the corners and his nose was long and straight. He smiled to excess.

The importer sat on a high stool behind a wooden counting board, leaning his beefy arms upon its well-worn surface. “As it pertains to me,” he was saying to Méarana as Donovan and Billy entered, “there is no occasion of memory. Many diverse goods from many diverse worlds pass through this building. Importer-exporter is a trade unto me, but art-critic is not.”

Teodorq waved his medallion. “Yuh sold me this bauble no more’n six moons ago. Yuh can’t remember that?”

Cheng-bob spread his hands helplessly. “Many Wildmen pass before my gaze. What makes one more memorable than another? It is for the buyers of Valency and High Tara that these goods are assembled. Wildwork is much in vogue in that quarter of the Arm. For me only rarely is there an occasion of retail.”

Méarana showed the man her own medallion. “Here is a second piece. You can see they came from the same tradition. This may also have passed through your hands.”

The wholesaler took both medallions and compared them. “Many are the pieces that pass through here. They are bundled into lots for auction when the buyers appear, and such lots want both diversity and similarity. But once they are gone and Gladiola Bills of Exchange have taken their places, of what use is the memory of them?”

“Please, sahb,” said Billy. “If we say what world, can you show us lots belong from there?”

The harper sighed. “Oh, Billy, it’s the name of the world we’re trying to find out.”

Billy ducked his head and tugged his forelock. “Oh, mistress harp. Billy see him sword up street belong-him such-much colors.”

“Pastels?”

“Card, he say sword belong world Enjrun.”

Donovan scowled, angry at the Pedant for having forgotten that information, and at the Sleuth for not sharing his deduction. He cursed himself for a broken old man.

“Do you have any lots of Enjrun merchandise in your warehouse?” Méarana asked Cheng-bob.

The proprietor shrugged. “This is an occasion of looking.” He slid off the stool and led the way into the back, where the shelves and bins were filled with shipping cartons. Some bore the names of art houses on Valency and elsewhere, others bore only lot numbers. Their entry into this portion of the building triggered an occasion of activity on the part of the warehousemen. A forklift floated down an aisle with a pallet, a supervisor at the other end of the aisle scanned lot numbers into her dibby and attached amshifars to the containers; but Méarana had the sense that moments before, none of these things were happening.

Cheng-bob called out, “Kola! Where are the lots from Enjrun that Vettery’s Cat brought in last month?”

The supervisor spoke into her throat-mike, listened with a hand cupped to her ear, and called back, “Ngi!”

Cheng-bob hollered thanks and led them down the front aisle. The rows, Méarana saw, were labeled in traditional consonantal order: k, ng, c, ñ, and so forth, and made a bet with herself that the bins in the cross direction were labeled in vowel order: a, a, i, i, and so on. The syllable ngi thus represented the second row, fourth bin.

Which was where the importer took them. “This lot was brought by the trade ship Vettery’s Cat,” he explained as they strode briskly between the striped lines of the walkways.

“Your memory is now working quite well,” Méarana said.

Cheng-bob turned his head. “What art the lot holds is unknown to me. The billings, accounts, and shipments are not.”

“Is Vettery’s Cat in port now?” Donovan asked. “We’d like to speak to her captain.”

Cheng-bob did not break stride. He spoke briefly into his throat-mike, then said, “No, there was an occasion for departure to Ōram and Zhenghou Shuai sixday last. Here is the lot, unconsigned, to be auctioned when the buyers appear from Valency and High Tara.”

The container was standard intermodal, slightly taller than a man, and possessed a double door on the side facing the aisle. It was festooned with stickers identifying the trade ship and the exporter, a notary’s seal testifying to its provenance, a tentative valuation, a large amshifar to track it.

“Is that a regular thing?” Donovan asked. “I mean the art dealers coming here.” Méarana began unfastening the clasps that held the doors closed.

“Oh, yes. The arrival of the buyers is unto us the occasion of a festival. The Gatmander Festival of the Wild Arts. Although, this is an occasion of honesty to me…” He lowered his voice. “…some of the artists are Gats. As you know, poor Gatmander is at the tail end of nowhere. ‘On the very edge of skies,’ as our anthem puts it. And…”

Méarana turned suddenly from the container. “What was that?”

Cheng-bob blinked puzzlement. “Our…anthem?”

“Yes. How does it go?”

“It is sung thusly…” And then in a voice innocent of key and scale, he sang:

“Out to the edge!” the harper cried. “Out to the edge! That is what Mother meant. This is where she came!” Then, more quietly, she whispered, “This is where she came.”

Donovan felt a glow of satisfaction for which he could not account, but the Fudir seized control of his tongue. “Sleuth! You knew! And you said nothing?”

His outburst frightened the exporter and he took a hasty step back. Teodorq, too, appeared startled and uncertain; but Billy placed a hand on the scarred man’s arm and said, “Sahb rest. No time now bicker-bicker,” and he led him to a low crate in another storage bay and caused him to sit there. The scarred man seethed with rage and humiliation.

You can’t take all the credit, the Pedant told the Sleuth.

“Oh, shut your food-hole,” said the Fudir. “Both of you.”

Sleuth you think you’re clever, the Silky Voice purred, but cleverness without communication is sterile.

Not every puzzle can be solved by smooth talking and seduction, Silky

“And not every problem is a puzzle,” said Donovan.

“Never mind all that,” said the Fudir. “Did you see the way she looked at us?”

Over by the cargo container, Teodorq Nagarajan scratched his head. “What’s wrong with the boss?”

The harper turned once more to the latches and swung the doors open. “Never mind him. He’ll be all right after he gets some rest.” She stepped inside the container, then stepped out again. “And I’m the boss,” she told the bodyguard.

Teodorq turned to Billy, who had rejoined them. “She’s the boss?”

The khitmutgar shrugged. “She always was.”

The shipping container held cases equipped with stacks of flat sliding trays. These, Méarana and the others slid out and in. There were earrings and pendants, medallions and brooches, bracelets and wristclocks, buckles and bangles, frets of interlaced wires. About half were done in the style of Méarana’s medallion—brightly colored stones set into gold or silver or aluminum—which Cheng-bob told them was called “parking stones” by the natives of Enjrun. No finer “parkingers” could be found, he assured them, in all the Spiral Arm.

Méarana did not know what she expected to find. In deeper drawers nestled cups and mugs, vases and breakstones. The art was beautiful, barbaric, compelling. But none of it brought her any closer to her mother. What had Mother seen in the art of Enjrun that sent her into the Wild after the source?

“What Enjrun lots belong here maybe two metric years ago?”

Méarana had to look twice to assure herself that it was Billy Chins who had asked. His Gaelactic had been improving over the months they had traveled together, and he could now frame whole sentences without falling into the Terran patois. The khitmutgar spared her a shy smile. “Maybe art your mother see, now long-time passé.”

Cheng-bob tapped his front teeth with his thumbnail while he thought. Then he activated his voice link. “Kola! Did that old wood carving leave with Donozay Mpehle last Art Festival? No? It was paid for, wasn’t it? Canceled? Ay!” He signed off. “A high relief wood carving sits in the outsize bins. As it pertains to one and all, it is an occasion for admiration; but as an occasion for purchase, not at all. Perhaps it is an occasion for firewood.”

The carving was in ksau, the very last bin in the rack used for outsized items, and when the shroud had been pulled aside Méarana saw immediately why it had neither been sold nor consigned to the mulcher. It was much too beautiful to destroy, and far too ugly to display.

A high-relief carving made from a light red-orange wood which Cheng-bob called “blood maple,” it seemed intended as an altar piece for some Wild cult. It was too large and garish for most private dwellings. It would disturb the tranquility of Peacock Junction or overthrow the domestic order of Dancing Vrouw. It was not playful enough for High Tara or serious enough for Die Bold. Any art dealer would, on first impression, desire it and, on second thought, know it to be unsaleable.

The figures in the carving were relieved from the wood, as if like dryads they had always dwelt within. They were running away from a spot in the center of the perspective. The varied sizes gave the crowded scene the illusion of perspective. The smaller figures were fleeing into the wood, the larger fleeing out. Several of the latter were attached to the base block only by a single foot, and so seemed to be leaving the wood panel entirely.

Not all the figures were fleeing. Some danced around the focal point with raised arms. The running and dancing men were cacophonies of bright reds and blues and yellows—war paint, or ceremonial body paint. The backdrop was a night sky in black lacquer, in which a single white star gleamed. Red lightning ran from the star to the focal point, where it engulfed the figure of a young girl standing with arms outstretched to the sides and head thrown backward as if to glimpse the star above her. Head, arms, feet, breasts emerged from the red flame in bold yellow. The remainder of the body was suggested only in the shape of the flaming torrent. There were dabs of red—at the mouth, at the tips of the breasts, even—by God!—at the tips of the toes and curled fingers.

That was craftsmanship!

Only a connoisseur would ever buy such a piece. Only a philistine would dare display it. Graceful curling letters ran along the base of the work.

Méarana pulled out her medallion, and held it at arm’s length before the carving.

The medallion was an abstraction of the same scene. The black ceramic was the night sky, the diamond was the star, the ruby sliver was the lightning. It was broken off, she remembered. Perhaps there had once been a brown-and-green segment representing the ground; or perhaps the parkinger had wanted to suggest emergence by breaking the circumference. She turned the medallion around and compared the writing on the back side to that underneath the carving.

The letters on the medallion were plainer, lacking the ligatures and diacriticals that the woodcarver had rendered. It was a simplified font of the same script. And as near Méarana could tell, it was the same inscription. She turned to Cheng-bob.

“Do you have any idea what this means?”

The exporter pursed his lips and went to the pouch on the side of the rack. “According to Captain Barnes’s testament of provenance, this work was the occasion of craftsmanship for one Henery Satéep na Fibulsongaram, a citizen of the Qaysarlik of Riverbridge on Enjrun and depicts a biannual festival in the City On The Hill called’ the Well of the Sun.’ The title—and the inscription may be the title—is ‘Fire from the Sky.’”

Méarana sighed and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Oh, thank you.”

Teodorq scratched his head. “Yuh think yer mom went looking for these dancing savages?”

Méarana laughed, because as far as savagery went, Teddy ran rather closer to the dancers than to his present companions. But all things are a matter of degree and everyone drew the line somewhere. “Of course not,” she said. “She went looking for whatever that is.” And her pointing finger rested on the bright star from which lightning bathed the earth.

But Méarana could not take her eyes from the figure of the young girl engulfed in the flames, and a cold, deadly certainty engulfed her heart.

At dinner that evening Méarana was silent and uncommunicative. The Dukovers did not notice. Donovan, who talked to himself, did not notice. Teodorq, who talked to anyone, did not notice. But Billy Chins, their servant, who insistently helped their hosts in presenting the meal, took note and whispered encouragement to her.

“Maybe so, we find her, your mama-meri. Fella no look, fella no find.”

Méarana gave him a wan, but grateful smile and attacked her “red porch,” a cold vegetable stew dominated by beets, with all the enthusiasm it warranted. It added to the chill within her. In the whole time of her search—when time had gone by and gone by, when no word had come, when the Kennel had given up, when Donovan announced his pessimism, while she had wended the Roads out to Lafrontera—in all that time a small flame of belief had burned within that she would find Bridget ban at the end of it all. But the sight of that Wild carving had extinguished it at last.

Teodorq chattered on to no one’s interest about the arms he had procured. “They still had my old nine that I pawned for eating money when I come in on the old Gopher Broke.” His “nine” was an automatic pistol that fired off a magazine of bullets, but why it was called a nine neither the Wildman nor anyone else knew. “It’s just what it’s called,” he had protested. He had also picked up a long sword called a “claymore,” much to Billy’s amusement.

“Why any-fella need him, pistol and sword? Suppose other-fella got him pistol. What good sword? And suppose other fella got him sword, the pistol is enough.”

“Sure,” Teodorq replied expansively, “until yuh run outta bullets.” Then in a labored imitation of Billy’s accent, “Sword, no run him outta stabs.”

Méarana tossed her spoon to the table and stood up. “I’m going out to take the air.” She turned and passed out through the sliding glass doors into the broad shrub-littered lawn behind the house. The grass had the same ragged quality of everything else on Gatmander. The bushes seemed to grow wherever chance had driven the seeds, and were trimmed in what could be only described as the “natural look.”

She grew aware that someone had come out behind her, and she did not look to see who it was. “I don’t think I want to know you anymore, Donovan.”

The scarred man was silent for a time. “I may not disagree,” he said finally. “It’s too much work. What is your reason?”

“I saw you hit Billy, back on Chandlers Lane.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you and he lingered at the arms shop.”

“That? He teased me about my eyes. I gave him a swat. It was good-natured.”

Méarana shook her head. “That isn’t the only thing. You treat him badly.”

“What about me?” asked the Fudir. “Do you want to know me?”

She turned and struck him on the chest with both fists. “Stop! Don’t play identity games with me. I’m going into the Wild and I’m scared.” There. She had said it.

“You should be. It’s a rough and dangerous region. There are old settled planets out there that haven’t made Reconnection. Human worlds where starflight is unknown, where men fight with gunpowder or swords. Travel is chancy—there are no scheduled liners—and the people are treacherous. They don’t like Leaguesmen. They want what we have, and they know they can’t have it because they can’t build the tools to build the tools. You wouldn’t last. Some tramp captain could drop you off on some primitive internal combustion world and never return to pick you up. He could sell you as a sex slave to some machraj or king.”

“I don’t think I—”

“I think you can trust Teddy. And even Billy might not run in a pinch. But there are limits to what the three of us can do. Do you want to risk it all just to find your mother’s grave?”

“I know that now. She’s gone. But I have to keep looking.”

“Why? Do you think she would thank you? Do you think she would even know?”

Méarana shrugged. “She may. You plan to go on, though.”

“There’s something out there. It’s just not your mother. Something that created an entire district of burnt-out worlds. The Burnt-Over District. It’s what your mother set out to find.”

“Then I’ll find it for her.”

The Fudir shook his head. “No. That’s not your quest. Go back to Dangchao. Put all this in your songs. Keep Bridget ban in your heart. That’s where I keep her.”

“Do you? I hadn’t noticed. But she was never an easy one to keep anywhere. She had a way of slipping off. You can’t go out there, Donovan. No matter how despicable you are, I can’t let you go.” She took him by his shirt and shook him until he rattled. “You’re coming apart, old man! You’ve grown unfocused, indecisive. Those six pieces of you are flying in all directions. And when any of them gets in a snit, you lose a part of yourself. You were more single-minded behind a bowl of uiscebeatha in the Bar of Jehovah!”

“It was the one thing on which we could all agree.”

“Listen to yourself. Is there some part of you that wants to die? What good would you be to me if your were half-drunk all the time? Whose skills would you blunt? The Pedant’s memory? The Sleuth’s deductive abilities? The Brute’s physical prowess? Keep them docile and you keep them useless.”

“They’re useless anyway,” Donovan said. “The Sleuth thinks the rest of us are stupid. Inner Child is afraid of his own shadow. The Brute…What’s the use? I could give you six reasons.”

“Six. That would include Donovan.”

He shrugged. “There’s such a thing as too cold-blooded.”

“Which means you can give me six good reasons why you should stay here on Gatmander and wait for us to return.”

“I would wait forever. I can’t do it. Zorba…”

“Don’t use Uncle Zorba as an excuse! That’s the very worst thing you could have said.” She turned and swept her arm across the Dukovers’ backyard. “What do you think of their landscaping?”

“Eh?” The scarred man took on an unfocused look while he tried to decide which of him was best suited to answer. But she did not wait for him to decide.

“Gats don’t think of themselves as actors,” she said. “It’s in their very grammar. They are always acted upon. Stuff happens. They’re just spectators. So, don’t you tell me, Donovan buigh, that you are tagging along because circumstances forced you!” She looked up, saw a drape flutter in the sliding door, and Billy Chins appeared briefly to nod at her. She indicated that she had seen him and took Donovan by the arm.

“Let’s go back and finish our porch.” The scarred man snorted. “What’s the rush? It was cold when they served it.” But he followed her meekly back into the Dukover house.

He had not swallowed more than three more spoonfuls when he realized what had been done to him. He turned a gaze already growing uncertain on the harper, and his mouth tried to open and form words. “You…”

“Sleep,” she said. “I’ve paid the Dukovers to watch over you until we return. Rest. Find peace. We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves. Start with that.”

When the scarred man was snoring, Méarana turned to Billy. “Are we ready?”

Billy spared hardly a glance for his former master. “Blankets and Beads, she lose him High Gat Orbit tomorrow. Bumboat go jildy, two horae; then cargo boat early morning.”

The harper nodded and turned to Sefr Dukover, the husband. “You’ll see that our luggage gets on the cargo boat?”

“As it pertains to me, there is an occasion of compliance.”

Méarana sought the intercession of heaven. “Just once, could you say, ‘I’ll do it’?”

The Gat twisted his face into a look of disgust. “As it pertains to off-worlders, there is an occasion of tolerance; but there is no occasion for offensive speech.”

Teodorq returned to the dining room, still buckling a holster around his waist. “Cab’s here, babe.” He spared a glance for the scarred man. “I still don’t like this.”

“Who will sing Nagarajan glories, my good pahari?” asked Billy. “Lady Harp or old man? Old-fella, he be no-good sick. He for burning ghats. Not long time die in Wild.”

Nagarajan wore his sword over his shoulder and he reached back to test its draw. “Didn’t say yuh was wrong, I said I didn’t like it. It’s a bad omen to start a journey. Shoulda sacrificed a goat.”

When they went to the cab hovering on the parking apron, Teodorq held Méarana back for a moment after Billy had gotten in.

“What’d he mean ‘pahari’?”

The harper glanced at the khitmutgar, then at the Wildman. “Hill-man, I think.”

Teodorq snorted. “Shows how smart he is. I was a prairieman, born and bred.” And he reached over his shoulder and refastened the thong on his scabbard to keep the sword in place.