Jo Clayton.

Shadow of the Warmaster.

Two hours before zeropoint-the meeting of Swardheld Quale and Adelaar aici Arash (from which events will be dated, backward and forward as circ.u.mstances warrant).

Prin Daruze/Telffer.

Sometime round midmorning on the third day of the second week in the spring month Calftime, Nuba Treviglio, Freetrader and free soul, set her ship down on the stretch of metacrete Telffer laughingly calls its star port, discharged one pa.s.senger and droned into town on the ship's flit to see what the world had to offer her.

Adelaar aici Arash watched her leave. To the ground, Treviglio said, what you do after that is your business and by G.o.d, she meant it. Adelaar bent over her case and thumbed on the a/g-lift, straightened and looked for some means of transport.

Metacrete, flat, filthy, chalk white, seemed like there were kilometers of it on every side, reaching out to touch the mountains in the west, the blue glitter of the sea in the east, and the long dark line in front of her, the city that serviced this desolation. A brisk wind blew from the distant seash.o.r.e, dragging with it pungent sea smells (seawrack, dead fish, iodine and brine); it lifted off the 'crete a heavy white grit that it drove hisssssing against half a dozen shuttles and a ma.s.sive barge, against a battered wreck being stripped for parts, against two tenth-hand stingships snugged close like link-twins, against some ancient flickits gray and vaguely insectile, against Adelaar's boots in a soft continual patter, against her tan twill trousers, the close-fitting tan twill jacket, against her face, forcing tears from her half-closed eyes. She flattened her shoulders, tugged on the case's tether and started walking, moving with an easy contained stride toward the city ahead. Except for the diminishing dot that was Treviglio on the flit, nothing but the wind and the grit moved in all that shimmery white glare.

She was short, slight, neatly made, hovering about early middle age with the help of ananile drugs. She wore her tan hair trimmed close to her head so she could run a comb through it and forget it; the wind was teasing it, twisting it into a ragged halo about her face, angering her though she wouldn't permit her annoyance to show except in the slight deepening of the shallow crows'-feet at the corners of her eyes, large eyes, gentian blue, cold eyes in a face adept at concealing what went on behind it.

After twenty minutes of brisk walking, she reached the edge of the field and stepped onto Telffer's StarStreet.

StarStreet/Prin Daruze/Telffer had a fuel dump, a shipsupply store that from the look of it operated by appointment only, a short stretch of pavement and a very tall fence. Adelaar angled toward the Gate and stopped before a wooden kiosk painted black with a battered plastic window so scratched by windborne grit it had lost any transparency it had ever had. The Gate was shut, there were eyes and heat sensors soldered to the fencewire, melters perched on swivelposts atop the wire. She looked from them to the kiosk. "T'k t'k, sweet sweet."

She located the outside palmer, a dullmetal oval freckled with old black paint, slapped her hand against it. A wall section shuddered, squealed, pleated itself until there was an opening wide enough for her to edge through.

Tugging the case inside with her, she crossed to the heavyduty comset screwed onto the back wall and inspected it as the door squealed shut behind her, closing her in with an unpleasant smell, a mix of ancient sweat, dead moss and dryrot. Fungus grew in scaly patches on the greasy metal ot tne comset; there was an ugly olive-ocher film on the corn's thumbgla.s.s.

She touched the gla.s.s, her face rigid with distaste, rubbed her thumb repeatedly along her side as she watched a hold-pattern shiver over the plate.A minute pa.s.sed. She glanced at the ringchron on her left hand, glanced again.

Again. "If I was paying you, you'd be out on your a.s.s yesterday."

Two minutes, three, five. ... A loud ting. A face in the plate, male functionary, a slash of a mouth, a thin nose so long it approached the grotesque.

"Name, origin, ship, purpose of visit." A bored monotone.

"Adelaar aici Arash. Droom in the Heggers." She slipped her diCarx from her belt, touched it to the reader, slid it back in its squeeze pocket when the pinlight flashed red. "Pa.s.senger tradeship Niyit-Nit, owner/captain Nuba Treviglio. Business with a resident of Telffer."

"What business? Who?"

Adelaar hesitated; as she'd built up her client list, she'd dealt with men like this and knew how unproductive annoyance was; push at them and they set their feet like mules. On the other hand, she wanted to say as little as possible to local authorities, she didn't know what their under-the-table ties were. There was a man on Aggerdorn asking questions about her the day she closed with Treviglio for pa.s.sage here; the Niyit-Nit lifted before she learned more, but she had little doubt who he worked for, less doubt that there were people in Prin Daruze with the same ties. Bolodo had stringers wherever there was a market for their contractees and raw worlds like Telffer always needed more hands. Hmm, throw him Quale's name if he keeps pushing me, no point trying to keep that quiet, soon as I hit the Directory, who wants to know will.

"That's my concern, not yours," she said, her voice neutral, nonaggressive, despite the implicit challenge of the words. "Should licenses be necessary, I will apply at the proper time and place."

"What business? Who?" He wasn't going to drop it though he knew and she knew he was going beyond his instructions.

"Swardheld Quale. I'll let him know your interest in him. I'm sure he'll be delighted someone cares."

Conceding defeat with a malevolent glower, he gabbled another setspeech.

"Qualified access granted, downtime coincident downtime Niyit-Nit, overstay downtime, fine one thousand telfs minimum a.s.sessed per day, business, full disclosure liabilities required on penalty locktime, locktime set complaint Telff, flake evidence, no recourse offworlder, locktime possibility conversion to fine by Camar Prin Daruze, schedule fines determined Camar, warning, altercation with Telff, presumed guilty, onus on offworlder t' prove case, congel, madura, olhon, grao, ebeche, viuvar, tendrij woods consensual monopoly, license required for export, severe penalty for attempted removal, any questions?"

"None."

"Gate open." The com went dark.

"T'k t'k, sweet sweet."

She tugged on the case's tether, slapped her hand against the interior palmer; when the panel shuddered without budging, she gave it a kick with her boot heel that sent it sliding open, squealing and whimpering as the pleats formed.

Wanting to kick the functionary where he'd feel it, she booted the door again, then swore at her folly as it died on her, the opening barely wide enough to let her waggle the case through and squeeze after it.

Outside, she brushed at herself, tucked away her annoyance and strode through the Gate.

As it clanked shut behind her, she looked about. She was on the outskirts of a gridded cl.u.s.ter of low, blocky, windowless buildings, gray and brown, scratched, dingy, not a bush or blade of gra.s.s to break the monotony.

Automated factories. Deliveries of raw materials already made, production in process, everything tucked neatly out of sight and sound. The patched, dusty streets were empty; as.far as she could see there wasn't an intelligent ent.i.ty within kilometers of her. No trans- port. He hadn't given her the chance to call a cab. "T'k, animated spleen."

She started walking.There was a tall octagonal tower lifting like a raised finger over the city, a flagpole stuck in the top with half a dozen tattered banners flapping in the wind. She a.s.sumed it marked some sort of official center and used it to guide her through the factory section.

After another twenty minutes without seeing anyone, a ground car like a black beetle hummed around a corner and sped past her; its driver stared at her, but went on without stopping.

-Friendly."

More of the humpy little vehicles zipped past, drivers and pa.s.sengers staring, no one offering a ride, a word, a favor. Great little world. Uh-huh! Bolodo would have a market here, selling closed contracts that took the laborers away when the job was done. Probably why the settlers came way out here in the first place, five generations of hermits, misanthropes and social inadequates whose idea of a good time had to be something like masturbation in a hot tub.

Solitary masturbation. Hah! might as well put out a sign saying stay away, we don't want you. Leave your coin, but leave. She fumed a while longer, then laughed, shook ber head. Eh-eh, Adelaar, you're just annoyed because your feet hurt. Multiple maledictions on those perfidious perjurous unprincipled bootmakers who foisted these instruments of torture on me.

The streets widened, lost their rule-drawn rigor as they turned and twisted among lush greenery, trees, shrubs, gra.s.ses, flowers, a thousand versions of fern from great, graceful clumps fanning overhead, their shadows a dark lace on the pale gray pavement, to gossamer cilia hanging from the trees. In this tangle, tossed down haphazardly, she saw bits and pieces of small free-standing structures, some domed, some with peaked roofs, some like tumbled toy blocks. Living places. The silence of the factories was gone; she heard birdsong and bug hum, children's laughter and their screams as they played among the ferns, voices of men and women talking, a man's shout. Now and then she saw the Telffs. They stopped what they were doing and stared at her, but no one spoke. The beetle cars came more frequently and were no friendlier than before; several times she had to jump for the gutter when a driver swerved at her, shouting obscenities. Sweat beaded on her skin and stayed there, adding to the discomforts this world laid on her the moment she set foot on it. If it had been anything else but Aslan that'd brought her here. .

. . Aaah! he'd better be good, Quale d.a.m.n well better be good.

The streets straightened and grew wider, the vegetation thinned. She glanced up, kinking her neck to see the top of the tower, stood watching the banners flutter as she smiled in weary antic.i.p.ation of a bed and a bath and food in her belly. Traffic was heavier and less aggressive, the drivers too involved with their own concerns to let their xenophobia loose on her. She went round a final curve and found herself trudging up a short ramp onto a raised walkway.

"A real live sidewalk. Civilization at last."

She moved past a clutch of small stores offering everything from stacks of fruit to electronic gadgets. The stores changed to eating houses, then taverns, then she was in a grimy rundown area, stepping over men sprawled sleeping on the walkway, around vomit and splatters of urine; she jumped down into the street several times to avoid cl.u.s.ters of lounging idle males who, when they saw her, whistled, popped their lips, made suggestive sucking noises, groped their crotches and shouted offers of a.s.sorted body parts. Twice a man grabbed at her, but she managed to avoid his hand and move on without having to damage him; they were Telffs and by functionary's warning, onus would be on her to justify whatever she did and she knew from frustrating experiences elsewhere that her presence here unaccompanied would be excuse enough for whatever they tried on her. Despite her growing fatigue, she set a quick pace for herself, her heels clicking briskly on the boards; she looked directly ahead of her, her face impa.s.sive, ignoring the taunts, counting on her peripheral vision to warn her of any- thing coming at her from the side, on her ears to warn her of an attack from behind."Drop." Female voice, loud, coming from the street. Without hesitation Adelaar went down, curling round as she dropped, landing on hip and elbow, shenli darter out and ready.

She didn't need it. Two men lay crumpled on the walkway some five or six meters off. She swung her legs under her and was on her feet a breath later. A flit curved over to her, its offside door open.

"Jump." Same voice.

She grabbed the case's tether and jumped. As soon as she was inside, before she'd sorted herself out, the driver slapped in the lever and the flit took off as if she'd goosed it. Adelaar straightened up, clipped the darter back under her arm and arranged the case by her feet. "Thanks."

"Nada." Ahhmm, kill them?"

Nope. Stunned 'em. Didn't know maybe they were friends of yours playing a prank."

-Not."

"Takes all types." The driver swung the flit round a corner and slowed to a more decorous pace. "That should be enough to keep us clear of lice. You just in? Thought so. You want to believe the s.h.i.t they tell you at the Gate, mess with a local and you lose. You got credit, they suck blood, no credit, Bolodo gets you. Reason I yelled, one of your unfriends had what looked like an Ifklii yagamouche; if he was a pro, he could've fried your brain 'fore he went down. I loathe those things."

Adelaar shivered. "I owe you. Let me . . ." Moving her hand slowly so she wouldn't startle her rescuer, she eased a business card from her belt. "Here.

Give me a call sometime."

"Shove it in the abdit there in front of you, no need, though."

"I know. Nonetheless ..." She dropped the card into the hollow. "That's a quiet stunner you've got, I didn't hear a thing."

"Built it myself. Any place you want to go?"

"City Center, the Directory. You're not a local."

"Sweet lot, aren't they. No. But I've a friend here and a map on call. Center Directory it is. Or . . . mmmm . . . nothing like a long hot bath after hard traveling, there's an ottotel not too far from Center, got a com plate in the more expensive rooms, these're tapped into the Main Directory, you can bypa.s.s most of the ha.s.sle that way, let your fingers do the talking." She grinned, dropping more years off her absurdly childlike face. Barely past p.u.b.erty, if looks counted. A pretty child, kafolay skin, kaff brown eyes, light brown-gold hair in an exuberant halo of tiny curls. There was a brown tattoo on the cheek nearest Adelaar, a detailed drawing of a hawk's head. A sudden dimple made the hawk dance as the girl broadened her grin when she caught Adelaar staring at her.

Adelaar drew her hand down the side of her face, looked at the smear of mud in the palm. "Ottotel," she said. "Please."

"Know what you mean. Shadith. My name."

"Adelaar aici Arash. Mine."

"Pleased to."

"And I."

Adelaar locked the door, activated a sweep from the case to ensure her privacy (local authorities legal and otherwise tended to ignore regulations when it suited them). Calling blessings on Shadith's head from every G.o.d, saint and holy force she knew, she scrubbed off Telffer's grit, grime and sticky sweat and with them the greater part of her irritation, pulled on a robe tailored from midnight silk, dialed up a pot of Nara tea and settled in front of the plate. Whistling a s.n.a.t.c.h of an old song, she fed tokens into the slot.

"Quale, Quale, where are you when you're home? If you're home ..."

She scrolled through the directory.

"Let Treviglio be right, let him be home, wherever that is. Wherever ... ah!

here we are. Swardheld Quale/ Quale's Nest. T'k t'k, how cute. G.o.d help me, suppose his mind really works like that. Lat 2 deg 31 min W, Long 48 deg 53min N. In residence, open for offers. Blessed be whatever.. I'm running out of time and money. d.a.m.n. If I could handle this myself . She thumbed off the directory and sat sipping at the tea, taking a moment to relax before she dressed and looked for transport out to Quale's Nest.

1.

A short while before the meeting, less than an hour. Quale's Nest/Telffer.

I was out in the back yard working on a harpframe, lovely wood, dark and resonant, didn't have a name, Herby snagged the tree out of the river and took it to his curing shed. Herby's a neighbor upstream, he belongs to one of the settlement families, his land's tax free so long as he or his kin own it; got the temperament and habits of a mudweasel, but he keeps to himself unless he scavenges something he thinks he can sell me, so he's not all that bad as a neighbor. Where was I? Ah. The harp. The shape sang under my hands and looked like music; whether it would sound as good, well, I was hoping. It was almost ready for stringing; I was carving a design into it, most complex pattern I've attempted, double spirals and woven lacings, amarelo buds and leaves in oval cartouches, took concentration and more patience than I thought I had until I started working on it. I'd put together frames before this one, trying one thing and another, different shapes, different woods, you get the idea; I wanted to make the sound as perfect as the shape. Far as I could tell. My ear's not so bad, but my fingers are all thumbs. The last one before this had a warm rich tone, I was quite pleased with it. When Shadith sent word she was coming, I got it out with a couple more and tuned them, I wanted to know what she thought.

Back yard's a comfortable place. I spend a lot of time here, working, reading, contemplating my navel, whatever. Got a plank fence around it to keep the vermin out. Flowering thornbushes grow in stripbeds against the planks. A sight to see, they are, come spring when every cane is thick with bloom. No roof, but there's a deflecter field for when it rains, keeps the wet out without ruining the skyview, which can be spectacular during summer storms.

One of them was blowing up the day I'm talking about, clouds were gathering over Stormbringer's peak, they'd be down on us in an hour or so. I've got the ground under my worktable paved with roughcut slabs of slate. Some of them are cracked; griza gra.s.s grows in these cracks and between the slabs, that's a native gra.s.s, dusty looking gray-green, puts out seedheads in the spring, not the fall, they stand up over the blades like minute denuded umbrella ribs.

Beyond the stone there's mute clover, griza doesn't have a chance against it.

There are stacks of wood sitting around, some roughcut planks, some stripped logs. I've got a largish workshed in the south corner, the roof is mostly skylight; I store my tools in there but don't work inside except in winter when it's too cold to sit in the garden. Or when I need to use the lathe or one of the saws. There are two viuvars (like short fat willows) growing beside the shed and a tendrij in the north corner. The tendrij was here on my mountainside before I built my house. The trunk's a pewter column a hundred meters tall and thirty around; branches start about fifty meters up, black spikes spiraling around the bole; the leaves if you can call them that look like ten meter strips of gray-green and blue-green cellophane. When the storm winds blow them straight out, they roar loud enough to deafen you; on lazy warm spring days like this one, they shimmer and whisper and throw patches of shifting greens and blues in place of shadow.

My worktable is a built-up slab of congel wood. Tough, that wood, takes a molecular edge to work it, but it lasts forever; a benefit to living on Telffer, you pay in blood for congel offworld. Mottled medium brown with patches of gold like a pale tortoisesh.e.l.l.

Pretty stuff, which is a good thing because it won't take stain any way you try it and even paint peels off, something about the oil, they say. I had the gouges I was using laid out on a patch of leather close to hand, the tool kit beside it, the frame I was working on set in padded clamps, the finished harps down at the far end waiting for Shadith to try them.b.u.t.terflies flittered about, lighting on the thornflowers, feeding on their pollen; a sight to add pleasure to the day, but it meant I'd got worms in the wood and I was going to have to fumigate the yard. There were quilos squealing in the viuvars. Quilos are furry mats with skinny black legs, six of them, and deft little black fingers on their paws. Never been able to find any sign of eyes, ears or nose on them, though they're fine gliders and can skitter about on the ground like drops of water on a greased griddle. They drive the cats crazy, how can you prowl downwind of a thing that's got no nose or chase something that can switch direction without caring which end is front? I had five cats last time I counted and they're all neutered, so that should be that, but none of them are black and two days ago I saw this black body creeping low to the ground, going after a quilo who was chewing on a beetle it picked off a thornbush, it's why I tolerate a few of the things about, they keep the bug population down. I threw a chunk of wood at the cat and it streaked off. A young black torn. Pels says he thinks there's something mystical about black toms, there's never an a.s.semblage of cats without one of them showing up, he says he's convinced they're born out of the collective unconscious of cats, structures of unbridled libido created to a.s.suage cat l.u.s.t. He may be right.

Pels kurk-Orso. Let's see. He's my com off and aux pilot. He's got a thing with plants and keeps my Slancy green; he's heavyworld born and bred, Mewyaurang; not many have heard of it, Aurrangers aren't much for company or traveling. 2.85 g. Where they have three s.e.xes. Sperm carrier (Rau), seed carrier (Arra), womb-nurse (Maung). He's Rau. Hmm. There's a heavy burden he has to bear. Drives him into craziness sometimes. Females of every sentient species I've come across, even the reptilids, want to cuddle him, they all think he's devastatingly cute. Fluffy little teddy bear with big brown eyes. Barely up to my belt which is small even among his own people. Talking about the Aurrangers, they're agoraphobes in a big way, live in huddles underground.

Funny, they're frightened of just about everything and they're the best d.a.m.n predators I've met. You ought to see Pels stalking something. That fuzz of his isn't fur at all, when he's up for hunting, it kicks over into a shifting camouflage that beats h.e.l.l out of a chameleon web. Thing is, he was born a misfit, always going out on the surface, fascinated by s.p.a.ce and the stars that gave the night sky a frosty sheen; he was different enough to be miserable with his own people. He applied for a work-study grant to University and got it, being very very bright, but once he got his degree, with an honors list a km long, no one took him seriously enough to hire him. He was too d.a.m.n cute.

When his money ran out, he had a choice between scavenging for sc.r.a.ps and a life of little crimes or living in luxury as a family pet. He was a reasonably competent burglar by the time I put my Slancy Orza into orbit park over Admin/University.

I was finishing a job for some xen.o.biologists, delivering a cargo of rare plants. The com off I had on that trip, she had a sweet paper trail and was a golden G.o.ddess for looks, but she was a whiner. k.u.mari and me, we came close to strangling her, but we held off till we reached University. We fired her without recommendation; it was safer than pushing her out a lock if not so satisfying. We turned over the plants and went out to celebrate our freedom from that rockdrill whine.

Sometime round dawn we got tangled up with Pels who was committing mayhem on what looked to be half the thugs on StarStreet. Amazing thing to watch. We hauled him loose and took him home with us because k.u.mari was curious about him. No, she wasn't about to go motherly over him. I talk about her as she, because she looks female, but she's a neuter, got the s.e.x drive of a rock and her maternal instincts could be engraved on a neutrino with a number ten nail. Most of her energy goes into curiosity.

We needed a com off, he needed a job. We took him on for one trip to see howhe fit in. That was seven years ago.

Pels was digging around the thornbushes, pulling weeds, cleaning away sawdust and bits of paper and old leaves, loosening the earth about the roots. He keeps after me about the plants in the back yard, says I'm neglecting them, but those thornbushes could use a little neglect, they're volunteers blown in by the hefty winds we get in the thaw storms. If I pampered them the way he wants they'd take over the yard, hey, they'd take over the world. He was about three-quarters finished with the thorns, baroom-brooming along, happy as he could get on a miserable one-g world.

k.u.mari was stretched out on a padded recliner, leafing through a book of poems composed in inter-lingue and interlarded with local idiom. She read s.n.a.t.c.hes of them to me when she came across something she thought I ought to like.

Mostly I ignored her, being too concentrated on gouge and wood to have much mind left for other things. All the same it was a pleasant noise. Shadith came about an hour after lunch. . . .

Shadith brushed aside curls and chips of wood, swung onto the table; she set her hands on her thighs, waited until I finished the cut and ran my thumb along the line. "I need a sneaky lander," she said. "Lend me Slider."

"Hmm. See what you think of those harps. You like one, you can have it."

She laughed at me. "Old Bear, put down your ax." Hooking a foot around a table leg, she leaned back, ran her eyes over the three harps, chose one, not the best, I thought, but a start. With a treble grunt, she straightened, settled the harp against her shoulder and drew her fingers along the strings.

"Interesting tuning. Well?"

"Why d'you want it?"

She wrinkled her nose at me, concentrated on her playing. Even I could tell the tone was dull; the song was dying on her. One dud. I think the wood was the problem there, no resonance to it. "Gray's disappeared," she said, "I'm off to see what happened."

"I see. Want help?"

"This is a loser, Bear." She did her lean again, switched harps, straightened.

"Don't think so." It was my favorite she had this time, she smiled at the sound of it, played a s.n.a.t.c.h of some tune or other, moved on to another, then another. "My first chance to go off on my own," she said after some minutes of noodling about. "In my own body. Got a tuning wrench around? I want to try something."

"In the kit." I lifted the tool kit over the harpframe I was working on and pushed it toward her. "Keep it if you want, easy enough for me to pick up another, you might be too busy where you're going." I watched her as she began retuning the harp. This was the first time I'd got a good look at that new body, couldn't really count the web signal, the picture flats out here on Telffer, it's a long way from anywhere. And the color bleeds, runs round the image like lectrify jelly. Lot of dumps and glitches around us. I found myself thinking, what's a baby doing jumping into something hairy as that? Then I had to laugh; Shadow, little Shadith sitting inside that head, she was what?

three, four thousand years older than me? Thing is, it's hard to remember that looking at her. I was glad I'd had the nous to keep my mouth shut. I doubt having a body has changed her that much; she had a nasty turn of speech when she was annoyed.