"Shoosh, Kri, Kahat? That's the third Kahat ve's had since ve came." He dug into his face fur with short black claws that looked as formidable as his tearing teeth, explained to Adelaar what he meant. "Kinok eats the current Kahat every two years when the bud's about to complete separation. Sacrifice to the drives, ve says. You know Sikkul Paems?"

"I know."

"Me, I'm com off and k.u.mari, she's Ship's Mom; she knows everything about everything."

"Fool!" k.u.mari patted him on the cheek. "Cute-ness has warped your pea brain."

He growled at her, fell silent as a pair of serviteurs came humming up with large trays. Spice tea, crisp wafers, small gla.s.s bowls with sections of local fruit, gla.s.s skewers to eat them with. The tea service was native clay, rough glazed, a warm dark brown with hints of rust and a deep blue shadow where the glaze was smooth, the drinking bowls generous with a restrained elegance of form.

Adelaar lifted one of the bowls, cupped it in her hand, enjoying its weight and texture. "Local?"

"One of my neighbors downstream, she's got a patch of kaolin she's been working for the past thirty years." Quale came through an arch and dropped into the fourth chair. "Do anything for thirty years and you tend to get good at it. Pour for us, k.u.mari."

He sat sipping at the tea and watching the storm. Adelaar skewered a slice of ruby fruit, ate it. It was good, a mix of bloodheart plum and citrus, firm, fleshy, full of juice; she closed her eyes, swallowed the fruit, savoring the blend of flavors in her mouth and the drama of the storm against her ears. She thrust the skewer through a rose-pink wedge, sniffed at it, crunched her teeth into it, smiled at the spurt of sweet tart flavor. Alternating bites of wafer and fruit, washing them down with sips of tea, she took the edge off a hunger she hadn't noticed before.

After several minutes of silence, Quale turned his head. "You send your driveroff?"

"T'k, I forgot him, I left him sleeping in his flickit." She grimaced at the rain. "I hope the thing doesn't leak."

"Who?"

"Sour type called Oormy. Sounds unlikely, but that's what I made of his mutter."

"Ha! the Worm. No one else would bring you?"

"No." She smoothed her fingers over the textured glaze of her bowl. "What do you want me to do? Go back to Daruze and wait? I don't think that would be a good idea."

"No. Of course not. Ship's lander is coming down here, we're not going anywhere near the city. Unless you have something there you need to retrieve?"

"My case in the flickit, that's all I have."

"Hmm. Let Worm sleep till the storm's over. He can't fly in that stuff anyway." He reached under the table, pulled up a servitrage, ordered the housekeep to fetch Adelaar's case the moment the rain stopped and tell the driver Oormy to go home. After he clipped the trage away, he set his elbows on the table, clasped his hands. "About time you did some talking, mmm?"

"Time . . . how much longer will this storm last?" "An hour, maybe a little more." "Ah." She closed her eyes, weariness sweeping through her, three plus years working alone, never knowing if the next day, next hour, next minute would see her banging her head against a barrier even she couldn't get through or around, or in a trap that got her ashed, three plus years until Quale said Done and the deal was closed. Three plus years stretched taut, then the elastic broke. It hadn't hit her up there in the office, but now. . . . Now, soothed by the sounds of the storm, the tea and fruit a warm comfortably heavy lump in her middle, a need to talk washed over her, frightening her, at the same time luring her to say things she'd never said even to herself, to say more than she'd said to anyone since Churri the Bard. She understood what was happening to her, the euphoria that came from a sudden release of tension, but understanding was no help at all. "Mind if I ramble a bit?" "Why not. I need to get the feel of things." His voice was distant, almost lost in the storm noises, as seductive as her exhaustion. "Just talk, whatever you feel like saying."

"Mmm." Eyes still closed, she slid down in the chair until her head rested on the back; she never sat like this in public, never, but she was too tired to care, just moving a finger made her body ache. "You know anything about the Saber worlds? I can understand that. Still, people did go there, especially to Soncheren, sunsets and opal mines, chasm falls and tantserbok, hunters came from all over to hunt the tantserbok. I never understood those types, going after beasts no one could eat or use; their flesh was poison, their skin wouldn't tan, it rotted in three days no matter what you tried. And more hunters died than tantserboks, five hunters out, one back. The ratio changed now and then, never in favor of the hunters, but all those dead seemed to make the next ones more eager. Can you explain that to me, Quale? Can you make it make sense? I think stupidity can't be genetic, it has to be a birth defect or something like that. Why else with the kill rate like it is are there so many idiots around? Ah, that was a long time ago. Churri came to see the sunsets. Churri the Bard he called himself, a poet of sorts, I'm no judge; he moved me, but my brothers laughed at him. He was a little man, I'm not tall and he'd tuck under my chin, he got me so messed up, I didn't know which end was where, G.o.d I hate that phrase, I don't know why I use it, one of my brothers caught us, nearly killed Churri, he took off and didn't stop till he was on a ship going somewhere else. A month later I was being sick in the morning and bloating up like a milaqq in a cloudburst. ..."

Her voice trailed off, she opened her eyes a slit and examined Quale. There was something about him that reminded her of Churri, she couldn't decide what it was, but then she wasn't all that good at reading people. Not his looks, Churri'd been bald as an egg and dark amber all over, with bronze cat eyesthat laughed a lot though never at himself. A streak of cruelty with little malice in it, like the cruelty of a cat, a spinoff of the curiosity, pa.s.sion, detachment that fueled his poetry. Aslan had inherited the curiosity and the pa.s.sion, but hadn't yet acquired that detachment, probably never would. Quale, what was it about him, something of that same detachment? that playful painful digging into the other's, well, call it soul? Quale had an easy way of moving, but Churri was made of springsteel and sunfire, to look at him made her shiver. Quale was amiable, competent enough but low in energy. Tepid, that was the word. Churri was restless and unpredictable, he seemed easily seduced into tangents but was not, no, that was his cunning; he was a stubborn little git, when he wanted something, he got it, her for one. That was something else their daughter had inherited; she was about as biddable as a black hole before she could walk or talk. Ahh, it didn't matter, probably just a question of hormones. I was upset and tired, let my guard down. She shut her eyes.

"My father was a man of great honor, hmm! He shut me in a cell and brought in wh.o.r.es to tend me because no decent woman should have to look at me.

It's a miracle or good genes, take your pick, that I lived through that time and Aslan was born healthy. My father left her with me till she was weaned, then he gave her to a baby market. If she'd been a boy he might have kept her though I don't think so, she looked too different, skin was too dark, eyes were gold like Churri's, not washy blue like his. Me, he sold into contract labor. Not to Bolodo, to a smaller Contractor, one you could get loose from if you had the brains and drive. I don't like thinking about that time, but it taught me what it took to survive when you didn't have a family back of you.

After three years I managed to buy out and I went looking for Aslan. Seems to be a habit, that. Found her too. Things were fine for a while, I was doing this and that, pulling in enough credit to keep us comfortable. Apprenticed myself to a minor genius and learned everything he wanted to teach me and a lot he didn't want out of his hands. Until Aslan hit p.u.b.erty. And I turned into my father. T'k. We had some royal fights. Aslan was smarter than I'd been, no roving poets for her, but she didn't like my friends, she found them boring, nauseating, unethical, she had an obsession about ethics, don't know where she picked it up, it was bad as a deformity for scaring people off, she didn't like what I was doing, ethics again, she wanted no part of my friends or my business. The rows got worse, nothing physical, we weren't that sort, but we were clawing at each other with words and she was very good with words, better than I was, I sputtered and yelled and got frustrated, but she never lost her tongue. We loved each other, but we couldn't live together. So Aslan went to University." Adelaar sighed.

"She couldn't stand my friends, but she took up with some of the worst nannys there, flatulent bores, maybe intelligent but ignorant of anything to do with real life. I'd visit her, she'd visit me, we'd be polite a while about each other's friends and oh everything until the facade broke and we had another row. We'd give it a rest till next time, but we kept in fairly close touch by submail. Funny, we had our best conversations on faxsheets, though maybe not the most pri- vate. We set up a code of sorts, words that meant trouble but I can handle it, trouble help fast, that kind of thing. She has this fixation about recording cultures for the poor destroyed native species who'd probably skin her and roast her if they got the chance, she was always poking into places no sane trader would go near; we had rows about that, paranoid mama she called me, you get what you expect, she said, expect people to be nice, you get nice. I told her she was an idiot. She just laughed. Then this Unntoualar thing came up, a chance to be the first researcher into Kavelda Styernna. She stopped by Droom on the way there, she was full of it, the first time she'd gone in alone; she'd got five student a.s.sistants and a manager, Duncan Shears, she said he was the best there was at handling logistics, University was going all out for her. I was scared out of my mind for her, I'd heard nasty rumors about the Styernnese and the Unntoualar, I warned her she wouldn't like what she was going to find out and she should be d.a.m.n careful what she looked at,University was no good to her if the Oligarchy decided to off her, what could they do about an accident however fatal? I told her to yell if things looked murky, I'd come and get her, h.e.l.l with Styernna and everything. This time she didn't argue, she knew it was going to be touchy, the Oligarchy was only letting her in because of long hard pressure from their homeworld Bradjeen Kiell and from University and they were going to watch every move she made.

It's a filthy universe and we're about the filthiest things in it. If it was up to me, I'd say sweep the debris into the nearest sun and get on with today's business. Knowing how sick and perverse we can be is useless, doesn't change anything except maybe it encourages the freaks. I told her that, I don't know how many times, but she's a pa.s.sionate creature, Aslan, and she believes time can repair the damage we do if given material to work with and it's her mission to collect that material. I said that, didn't I, ah well, my mind's not tracking, I'm too tired. So she went. I got a submail letter from her a month later, bright and chatty, saying how helpful the Styernnese were, no doubt for benefit of the censor she expected to read it, but she worked the code in and that told me it was a bigger mess than even I thought and she was scared but hanging on and if I didn't hear from her by the last third of each month I should come get her.

Come quiet and careful. I started tying knots in things so I could go as soon as the mail didn't come.

"It happened so fast. Got a letter one day where the undertext said she was picking up stories that nauseated her, that she was nervous but coping, three weeks later University subbed over a transcript of her trial and an apology because they couldn't do anything directly for her, but she was still alive; there'd been a death sentence, but it had been commuted to thirty years contract labor. Alive! Under involuntary contract, you aren't alive, you're walking dead. The time I was under contract I was tougher than Aslan'd ever be, but those three years came close to killing me. Be d.a.m.ned if I left her in that mess. She'd been trashed, University said as much, but I didn't need them telling me. They were going to try buying her clear if they could find out who had her, and they were going after Styernna; oh, they were hot against Styernna, gnashing their bitty teeth, shuh! I didn't care what they did, I wanted my daughter. Besides, that lot of nannys couldn't find their a.s.sholes without a map.

"Getting into Styernna wasn't easy. They'd closed down the ports, not even homeworld types could land, and they had the satellites on alert for snoopers, but given the coin, any thing's available. I knew this smuggler, he put me down and arranged to lift me off a month later. I nosed around Kay Strenn, that's the capital, trying to sniff out what they'd done with Aslan. It wasn't easy, Aslan calls me paranoid mama, but I'm a lamb beside those s.h.i.ts. I have this medkit which is probably unlegal on just about every world I know of, but it's useful at times like this, I suppose I shouldn't tell you that, what the h.e.l.l. I went after the trial judge, he was the only one I could get at without more preparation than I had time for and local muscle which I had no access to. He didn't know much, except that Aslan must have found out something really ugly be- cause the Oligarchy wanted her dead and ordered him to take care of it. Like always, he did what he was told and drowned what qualms he had in the local version of hi-po brandy. He was involved in the commutation, he had to sign the papers; I got Bolodo's name from him and something peculiar. If the Oligarchy wanted Aslan dead, why sell her to a Contractor who might take what he learned from her and blackmail them? Didn't make sense. Officially my babbling judge knew nothing about why it happened, but he'd picked up rumors.

Bolodo had paid certain members of the Oligarchy bribes and promised them Aslan would disappear so thoroughly she'd be better than dead. Why Aslan? Not for her body, shuh! she's my daughter and I love her, but even I wouldn't call her a beauty. She's attractive enough, but there are thousands of women more so. Not all that s.e.xy either, she's more interested in scrungy natives and putting together culture flakes than she is in men, they're for recreationwhen she's not busy with something else and that shows. To be honest, Quale, she's a very boring person. Secrets? Everything she's done has been published one way or another. She's a xenoethnologist, for G.o.d's sake, who'd pay a pile of coin for a xenoethnologist? There it is. What it says to me is this, Bolodo had an order from some crawly who has the hots for a scholar and Aslan dropped into their fingers. Scholars do tend to have a lot of backing, colleagues and so on who yelp when something happens to one of them, I give the nannys that.

"I dumped the judge and got off Styerana with lice hot after me ready to do me worse than they did Aslan. That must have been when Bolodo discovered someone was snooping into their business; there was enough left of the judge for that.

I suppose I should have offed him, but the easy life I've had the last few decades has made me soft. Couldn't do it. He was such a miserable little worm, I just couldn't squash him.

"I went home for tools, visited some old friends; by the time I reached Spotchals, I wasn't me, had distorters on my bone structure and twisters on my body stinks. Just as well, Bolodo had spotters out, bloodoons looping over every port, sniffoons trundling through the streets, don't know if they were looking for me or what they thought they were doing, but if was a nuisance. Local lice were irritated by all this, that was points for me, they tended to knock down the 'oons whenever they came across them. After I got dug in, I didn't have too much trouble keeping hid. You know Spotchals, the police there are nothing special; they do what they have to and not much more and the government's less corrupt than most, and there are thousands of ships going in and out, busy place, and a huge population.

"Getting through security around the Bolodo compound was something else. It took me three years of digging, slow tedious dangerous digging, dancing tiptoe around the sleeping tiger to get close enough to work the mainbrain. You don't know how many dead ends I banged into, but I finally wormed a way through perimeter security and set up a protected corridor that would let me nest in the walls each night and gnaw away at the records hunting for Aslan's file. In and out, living on my nerves, feeling for traps, moving a hair at a time, day by day, week by week, month by. month. Twice I joggled something; it wasn't exactly a trap, but it alerted Security and there was a general alarm, I stopped breathing, didn't move and they missed me; they ran all around me, but they didn't find me. And I started again hair by hair, looking for Aslan. They were tense for weeks after each of those brushes, jumping at shadows, it made things easier and harder for me; all that activity covered a lot I was doing, on the other hand someone could stumble on me any time if my Luck went bad, it was enough to give me permanent shakes. After two more months of this, I found her. She was listed as part of a special shipment to a world so secret it wasn't identified except by a code name. This was in a limited access file, you needed five keys entered simultaneously to release it if you didn't have a shortcut like my crazyquilt. And still that worldname was coded. I duped a part of the file, the part about Aslan. All the shipments were there, fifty years of kidnapping and slaving; I thought about duping the whole thing, but I was afraid of staying in there too long, besides, I didn't care about those others, what I wanted was Aslan. Oh. Yes. I got something else, note this, Quale, this is important. Those shipments are a.s.sembled at a substation off Weersyll, they go out roughly twice a year. There's one scheduled for three months from now, I hope you can follow it. Lyggad says you can, he's the one researched you for me, you know you've got a very odd history, dumb, I don't have to tell you about your life, where that ship is going is where we'll find Aslan. I've got the flakes with me, I thought you might need to see them. That night I didn't try for the code, I took the flakes out of the compound and stowed them in my case. I gave myself three more nights to break the code and identify the destination, I set up pa.s.sage off Spotchals, didn't care where to, on half a dozen ships each night, different hours, I wanted to be out and off fast, you know Spotchals, there are what, fifty? a hundred?

ships leaving every night, if I was quick enough, slippery enough, I'd getahead of the guards, the 'oons, even if I tripped alarms all over the place.

As long as I got clear of the compound. That was the trick. Getting clear.

Security hadn't come close to my corridor, not once in all those months. It was worth taking the chance. I went in, set things up to collapse behind me if I had to run, slipped into the limited files and started hunting for the key to the code that concealed the world and its location. I thought I was being very very careful, but that particular line was loaded with traps, almost the first move I made set off alarms, turned the compound into a bomb waiting to blow. This time they knew they had a rat in the walls and they weren't going to quit till they got it."

"I jerked my taps and went away fast, the corridor shutting down behind me, erasing my backtrail. I thought I got away clean. I collected my case and was offworld before Bolodo Security finished flushing the compound and turned their search on the ports. I dodged about for several months, shifting IDs until I was me again. There was no sign of interest in me before Aggerdorn, that was where I got pa.s.sage here with Treviglio. I shouldn't be surprised, though, should I. It isn't that big a step to tie the agitator on Kavelda Styernna to Aslan and Aslan to me and given what happened on Spotchals, adding in Adelaris, well, there I was. Kinok and k.u.mari were right, Bolodo's little sideline is nasty, dangerous and profitable; the net on Aslan's shipment was close to a billion gelders and remember there've been two shipments a year for more than five decades."

She opened her eyes, yawned. The storm was still yowling outside the deflectors, though the winds were dying down, the rain slackening. "You know the most frustrating thing? I was on Spotchals two months before Aslan's shipment left Weersyll. Two d.a.m.n months." She glanced at the storm with impatience, all pleasure in it gone, sat up and ran her hands over her hair, pulling control like a coat around her. "You can follow that ship?"

"If we can set some ticks. We'll know more about that shortly. Pels, get on to Kinok, have him start a run on Weersyll, then you get hold of some of your dubious friends, see what they can give you. If they need time, have them message you at our drop on Helvetia. k.u.mari, see if you can get through to ti Vnok; say we'll make Helvetia three weeks on. If he wants to meet, have him leave time and place at the drop." Quale got to his feet, stood back to let the others move past him. He glanced after them, turned to look down at Adelaar. "Helvetia first. We have to settle the escrow and register the services contract." His mustache lifted in a smile reflected in his pale eyes.

"Even Bolodo won't mess with Helvetia."

"They could wait beyond the Limit, jump us there."

"Slancy Orza has a trick or two. Hmm. Give you a few hours' sleep and the world won't be so grim." He bent, reached under the table. "I'll have a serviteur clear the table. Anything you'd like?"

"The storm to end."

"Won't be long now. Relax."

She made an impatient gesture. "If your lander can't work through this little disturbance, what good is it?"

"It's being droned down, no use taking chances for a miserable half hour that we can make up with no trouble once we're insplitted." A brow lifted, another smile, then he too was gone.

She sat and watched the rain thrum down, watched it diminish abruptly to a trickle. The clouds raveled, paling, thinning; patches of sky appeared, vividly blue in contrast to the shadowed whites and pale grays of the vanishing clouds. Shafts of sunlight shot down, touching droplets of rain into blinding glitters; the greens outside the garden shimmered like polished jade.

Quale read her too well, curse the man, her gloom dissipated with the storm.

Her ambivalence remained. Action was on hold for the moment, once it began it'd go with a rush. Out of her control. Before, she'd been in charge, now he'd be. Quale.

Enigmatic man. She smiled, a wry tight thinning of her lips, as she remembered Lyggad stroking his pile of faxsheets, wrinkled atomy, big-eyed elf. The firstpart of his life Quale was a violent brute with a strong skilled body and enough intelligence, or maybe it was cunning laced with Luck, to acquire a ship and hold together a motley crew of scavs, a sleazy, crude scavenger whose idea of subtle attack was rip and run, then he'd tangled with the Hunter Aleytys and suddenly he was something more. A clever man, quiet, calm, cutting ties to his former . . . well, you couldn't call them friends, say a.s.sociates, pals, buddies, whatever. A man who kept clear of trouble. Lyggad said it was like Aleytys gave him a brain transplant. He giggled when he said it, but obviously more than half-believed it, Aleytys was part Vryhh and who knew what those types could do when they put their minds to it? He said some of Quale's ex-buddies got nosy and demanded to know what happened, implying in forceful though limited language (that was Lyggad being prissy) that the woman had castrated him. They didn't ask twice. In that, Quale hadn't changed, he was fast and nasty when the occasion required. So Lyggad said.

Slancy Orza. Rummul empire trooper, Lyggad said, mostly sh.e.l.l and drives when Quale acquired it, a wreck flying on kicks and curses. The drives used to be huge clunkers that ate fuel like it was free.

Quale yanked those and put in new drives; they were nothing standard according to the few folk who got a look at them and were willing to talk. Huge, sleek, powerful Slancy Orza (Lyggad's voice went wistful, his tongue caressed the words), she can outrace a Sutt Aviso, sit down on a 3g world without bursting a seam and lift cargo nearly equal to her own weight.

She heard a quiet rumble, went down the stairs to stand on the gra.s.s looking up at a small lander as it dropped toward the ground. The pad, she thought, Worm must be gone by now. She drew her hand down over her face, sighed, started for the house.

Three years std. earlier.

Aslan aici Adlaar daughter to Adelaar aici Arash riding to an unknown destination in the hold of a Bolodo transport.

Aslan muttered and blinked as she came out of a drugged sleep. She lifted her head, let it fall back as pain lanced from ear to ear. "Stinking . . . what now?"

Dim blue light. A cylinder. She was on a cot inside a tincan, cots spreading out on either side, above and below. She was catheterized but was not uncomfortable with it, the appliance was more resilient than most; there were restraints on her wrists and ankles, but they had sufficient play to let her sit up, even hang her legs over the cot's edge. She was surprised that she wasn't under full automatic care, her body processes reduced to a low hum.

This waking restraint was wasteful and from what she knew of contract labor transports, unusual. She tried again and this time made it up. When her head stopped pounding, she looked around.

The other contractees ... no, she thought, don't funk the name . . . slaves, some of the slaves were stretched out sleeping, some were sitting up, staring morosely into the blue gloom, others were talking together, still others had books and were reading or earphones, listening to flake players. She hadn't seen any of them before, Bolodo had kept her in solitary for months, probably so she'd have no chance to pa.s.s on anything about the Oligarchy and what they were doing to the Unntoualar; she had two coveralls, one clean each day, whatever flakes or books she asked for, but nothing from her own gear. She'd asked for that, but no one bothered to listen to her and she decided they'd ashed her things, just another paranoid precaution. Hmm. My own personal paranoid was too too right, mama'll beat me over the head with that for the next hundred years. She clicked her tongue, smiled as she remembered her mother's habitual t'k t'k that used to irritate her so much when she was a teener.

She went back to inspecting her companions. They were past adolescence, none of them old (making allowances for ananiles and mutational differences). All of them seemed to be sprouts on the cousin stem and there was a moreintangible likeness-they were all professionals or artisans (no slogworkers in the mix) wearing the kind of gear experienced travelers chose, plenty of zippered pockets and easy to take care of. She looked down. She was back in her own tans, boots and all, the Ridaar unit in its belt case. Evidently they hadn't ashed everything. Refusing to think about that, she slid off the cot, stretched, the tethers stretching with her, the catheter giving her no trouble.

Her equipment cases were strapped beneath the cot where she could get at them if she wanted to.

She edged around and stared at them, despair cold inside her. They are by G.o.d sure I'm not going to get back, unless. . . . She uncased the Ridaar, ran through the overt index, then called up the last of the hidden files.

Report: deepfile Ridaar: re: Unntoualar Code: icy eagle's child d.a.m.n you Tamarralda I am not 324sub e minus one one half.

. . . I'm sure of it now, subject Zed has opened up enough to feed me some songs. It's the usual thing, they've made an accommodation with the new powercenters and they're not about to endanger their survival to help a transient female of more or less the same species as the invaders who took their world from them. The Unntoualar I'm living with are confused, on the one hand I seem to be here with the blessing of the invaders, on the other they've been quick to see the not-so-hidden hostility to me. I've been careful to limit my inquiries to their songs and the story tapestries connected with these, with those dozens of thready fingers it's no wonder they're marvelous weavers. No color vision, so line and texture dominate; almost but not quite writing; from what I've seen so far (which I admit is severely limited) they never did develop a written language, which was another clue since most races with a high psi quotient don't, concepts are too complex for the forced simplification of the written word. Why am I deepfiling this? Their psi-capacity is the hot spot; whenever I get anywhere near that, Zed, Wye, even crazy Tau start sweating blood.

Mike and Sigurd have done wonders with the language, it's a stinker, Tam, you'd guess it would be since a good half the nuance comes from esp fringes.

Duncan lived up to his reputation by producing a crystal set, so the youngsters could record a good portion of those fringes and give us access the Unntoualar and the Styernnese don't suspect. I hope.

They're projective telepaths, that's clear from the songs, one of the few such capable of transferring images into the minds of species alien to them.

Physically nonaggressive but not pa.s.sive. Their aggressions came out in psychic attacks; before the colonists came, they were the dominant species on Styernna, having more or less wiped out all compet.i.tion. Zed pulled a sneak on the censor, included a song in the first batch he let me flake about the arrival of the colonists and the short depressing settlement war; I haven't any idea why he did it, there's no evidence he can read me, maybe a gesture of rebellion, one he understands is probably futile. The Unntoualar tried their standard attack on the invaders, but the full force and flavor of it was blunted by the stolidity of those alien minds. Their single weapon was not only useless but proved to be disastrous for them; their most vicious attacks were perceived as surrealistic and erotic dreams. The last part of the song is one long wail against Fate as the Unntoualar realize this and begin dimly to see what it means for them.

Yesterday he brought in Rho and Nu, alpha males like him, they picked out a new tapestry and started singing, but the song had s.h.i.t-all to do with the images. It was about what was happening to the Unntoualar now. Since the Final Dispossession, the Oligarchs have h.o.a.rded for their own use the most powerful of the PT's (their name in the song is a complex combination of dream dancer, custodian of race memory, spear of the Unn, verbal shorthand: Stahoho idam kaij), parceling out the lesser PT's for the entertainment of their favorites.

All very secret, of course. The homeworld has rules for handling the natives and Styernna can't live without help yet; besides they know the ordure thatwill splatter over them if what they're doing gets out, plus the fact that half the scavs in the universe will come zooming over to harvest their share.

Oh Tam, what they're doing, it's a lot worse than forcing a PT to do his thing. They're torturing the miserable creatures to get more piquant dreams out of them. Sickening.

I didn't want to hear that, Tam, makes me nervous. I don't know what the h.e.l.l's going on, I thought I'd better get this deepfiled before Zed's plot (whatever it is) starts fruiting. Question: Is this a setup? Are the Oligarchs using Zed to snooker me into accusations I couldn't possibly substantiate? Is Zed doing this on his own? Is he working with or for other Unntoualar? What do I do? Well, I've got the kernel down, up to you to see there's heavy pressure put to investigate the Oligarchy and how it's using the Unntoualar.

Distorted, bleeding, the Unn staggered into the circle, shrieking with voice and mind, ululating interling and Unnspeech, flopping in front of Aslan, accusations foaming out of him, curses on the name of the Oligarch who owned him, tortured him, stole his dreams out of him. Guards surrounding her taking her away, taking away the Unn, dead Unn, twisted tormented. Dead too late for her. At least she was alone, Duncan and the others were at the base camp two sectors away, oh G.o.d, she was alone, Mama was right, she shouldn't have come.

She stood looking at the palm-sized plate for a long sick moment, then she sighed and canceled the read. If they'd bothered to locate and erase those files, she'd have had a sliver of hope that she could get out of this. They hadn't. Even the overt record was untouched.

She crawled back on the cot and sat with her legs dangling, the fingers of her right hand moving around and around the old b.u.m scar on her left wrist, a scar she'd gotten when she was nearly four and being punished by her foster mother for something or other, she couldn't remember what, but it was about two months before Adelaar came for her. When she noticed what she was doing, she stilled her fingers and smiled at the scar, a fierce feral grin. Bolodo doesn't know you, Mama, nooo indeed, you'll blow the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out of their skins before you're finished with them. Hmm. Better for my self-esteem if I don't sit around sucking my thumb waiting for you to show up. Problem is, what do I do and how do I do it?

She pulled her legs up onto the cot, pushed herself along it until she was sitting with her back against the hold wall, then started thinking about contract labor. Like everyone else, she'd accepted its existence as something morally reprehensible but generally necessary. Blessed be the Contractor for he takes away the ugliness of life. Societies always have those they cla.s.s as criminals, anything from ma.s.s murderers and big time thieves to heretics and skeptics who question the way things are. Your average citizen, he's more comfortable if he doesn't have to look at the poor, the handicapped, the mildly crazy and wildly crazy, the drunks and druggers, the different, the dregs. Why not keep your citizens happy, reduce taxes, remove focuses of disturbance-all that in one fine swoop? A way of using what would otherwise be a drag on the economy, a way of protecting the comfortable a.s.sumptions of the majority from any sort of challenge. Besides, new colonies need labor they can eject when the job is done so the workers won't pollute the paradise, heavy worlds need miners whose health they don't have to worry about, everywhere an infinity of uses for workers who can't object to miserable conditions and miserly pay. And there you have it, contract labor. A marriage of greed with respectability. Blessed be the- Contractor (but don't let him live in my neighborhood).

On her left a youngish man was stretched out, sleeping. Some time ago his hair had been sprayed into lavender spikes, there was a lavender b.u.t.terfly tattooed on the bicep next to her; his hands were square and muscular with short, strong, callused fingers. There was a heavy silver ring on his little finger; she couldn't see much of it, but the design looked familiar. A friend of hers on University had hands like those and a habit of giving rings like that to his students. Sarmaylen. He was exploring an ancient and long neglected formof sculpture, working every kind of stone he could get into his studio, threatening the neighborhood with silicosis from the dust he was raising. She leaned over, tried to see past the collapsed spikes; as far as she could tell, she didn't know the boy (she smiled, getting old, woman, when you look at a man like that and see a boy), he was young enough to be only a year or two out of school and she wasn't much into Sarmaylen's life these days. Snuffling marble dust didn't appeal to her; besides, she wasn't really interested in the more exotic varieties of the arts, couldn't talk to him about them because he snorted with disgust at every word she said. That was one of the reasons Sarmaylen was only an occasional sleeping companion though she found the touch of his callused, work-roughened hands electrifying. She smiled at the memory of them, smoothed her fingers across and across the burn scar. His hands were eloquent, his tongue was not, at least in the public sense, a pleasant change from her other friends and lovers. She was fond of him; if she never saw him again, she'd hurt a lot, but she could no more live with him than she could with her mother. Their casual off again on again relationship seemed to suit him as well as it did her, though she sometimes wondered what he was getting out of it besides the s.e.x, which was something he'd have plenty of without her. She frowned at the boy. A student of Sarmaylen, a sculptor. How did he wind up here? Artists and artisans like him never signed with Contractors. Not voluntarily. Trashed like me, I suppose. Or was he just out and out s.n.a.t.c.hed?

Her neighbor on the right was a small fair woman. Huge eyes in an oval angular face with prominent cheekbones. Energetically thin. Sitting, she seemed in flight like some birds Aslan had known. Her hands were narrow and bony, rather too large for her slight form though she managed them gracefully, her feet were narrow and bony, distorted by the stigmata of a professional dancer. She was turning a music box around and around in her fingers though no sounds issued from it, if she disliked the dull muttering silence in the hold (the tension in her body and the fine-drawn look of her face suggested that she did), the music of the box would remind her of the restraints that kept her tethered to the cot, so she left it silent. Her mouth twitched into a smile so brief it was like the flash of a strobe light. "Kante Xalloor," she said. Her voice was deep, husky, easy on the ears. "Dancer. Bolodo must have kept you stashed somewhere?" "Aslan aici Adlaar. Xenoethnologist." "Yipe. What's that when it's home?" Aslan tapped the Ridaar unit. "Sitting around listening to native remnants tell stories about how the world began."

"Weird." Xalloor looked past her at the sleeping youth. "You know him?"

"No. I don't know anyone here. Back there, I saw four walls and an exercise mat. Bolodo didn't want me talking about some things I got mixed up in."

"s.n.a.t.c.hed you?"

"Not exactly. Bought me out of a trashing; I suppose I should be grateful, the maggots that did it were going to top me. You?"

"I was on Estilha.s.s, I'd finished a situ with the Patraosh and had an offer of another on Menfi Menfur. Maybe you know the feeling, mishmosh and jigjag, hard to sleep, no reason to stay awake, nothing to do but wait for the ship to take me off. There was this stringman I met in a bar one night, I woke up in restraints on a Bolodo scout, no stringman in sight, just a pilot who looked in on me to see I was still alive, then ignored me. He wore Bolodo patches, made no mystery about who had me which was h.e.l.lishly depressing if you thought about it and I didn't have much else to do the next bunch of weeks till we got to the substation." She shrugged with her whole body, a vivid electric summation of her feelings. "We'll see what we see when they drop us. Him you were watching, he's called Jaunniko, he says he thumps rocks for a living."

Her thin brows wriggled skeptically, then rose in wrinkled arcs as Aslan nodded agreement. "The big lump on the other side of him, the one with his nose in a book, that's Parnalee, he's always reading. He says he's out of Proggerd, that's in the Pit, the Omphalos Inst.i.tute whatever that is, he got drunk the first night in the pens, he had a bottle of tiggah in his cases; he says he's the best designer in fifty light years any direction, didn't saywhat he designs. The three women next him, they're a group, the Omperiannas, you heard of them? Ah well, it's a big universe. They were my music the time I was touring the Dangle Stars. The little bald man who's doing all the scribbling, the one who looks like he's made of tarnished bra.s.s, he's Churri the Bard." She arched her mobile brows and converted her limber body into a question mark as Aslan's eyes snapped wide. Aslan twisted around, leaned forward and stared at her father. Curiosity seethed in her and a bitter anger against him for abandoning her, though she knew it was idiotic to think like that, he didn't know she existed; Adelaar had been careful to tell her that, her mother had a sentimental attachment to him which was both amusing and peculiar in a woman so icily unsentimental in other ways. That the man who'd fathered her could be sitting here so close to her, absorbed in his tablets, completely ignorant of their relationship, was absurd, it was the G.o.d she didn't believe in playing games with her life. She sighed, settled back, gave Xalloor an encouraging nod.

The little dancer grinned, shrugged, a ripple of her body that said, what the h.e.l.l, it's your business. "I got Tom'perianne to set one of his poems to music, Lightsailor, you know that one?"

"I've read everything I could get hold of." It was the truth, it was a way of getting close to her father without intruding on his life, something she was afraid of doing, afraid of what she'd find, afraid she wouldn't like him, afraid she would, afraid he wouldn't like her, she suppressed a shiver as she contemplated weeks, maybe months in this sealed womb, having to look at him and wonder. . . .

"It made a great dance. I got the Dangles Tour out of it. Why Bolodo s.n.a.t.c.hed him, I can't imagine. I mean if he ever gets loose and raises a stink, they've got more trouble than a swarm of vores up their backsides." She shivered.

"Don't look good for us, eh?" She shivered again, exaggerating her fear, fighting it that way, a glint of laughter in her eyes as she watched herself perform, then she went back to naming the captives, those close enough to be visible in the pervasive blue gloom.

Bolodo Man live in love gold fine gold Bolodo Man live in love pearl and emarald.

Churri's rich resonant baritone filled the hold; around, beneath, above it, the Omperiannas improvised a driving support (Tom'perianne, lectric harp, Nym'perianne, tronc fiddle, Lam'perianne, the flute).

Tribulation, sufferation Boring Haggard Bolodo Man Sing I sing thee sing we b.l.o.o.d.y bane for Bolodo Man Get cold get old, senility Cankers chankers dropsy pox Virus venin worm and tox Bolodo Man live in love gold fine gold Bolodo Man live in love pearl and emarald.

Kante Xalloor stretched her restraints to the utmost, standing on her cot, dancing with the tw.a.n.ging ties, her body singing a wordless answer to the chanted curse.

Malediction, imprecation, Jerk his melts, the B'lodo Man, Mockery, indignity, calumny and ban Rash and rumor, rancid liver, Bolo Bolo B'lodo Man Rot and rancor, snarl and spoil Ulcer, abcess, fester, boil, Epilepsy, apoplexy, Indigestion, inflammation, Fecculence and fulmination Dilapidation, moth and rust Treachery, atrocity, malignity and l.u.s.t Bolodo Man live in love gold fine gold Bolodo Man live in love pearl and emarald.

Jaunniko snapped thumb and forefinger, diving headlong into the music; when Churri paused and looked at him, he began his contribution: Wa ha wa hunh Sibasiba Bird Come out Come from the river comeWaha The bird come from the river Wa hunh Sibasiba Eat gold Eat gold Eat gold Eat fat greedy soul.

The bird come from the river Eat those pearl those emarald Eat you bare, Bolodo Man Bare a.s.s, Bolodo Man.

Churri laughed, his booming laughter filling the hold, filling that echoing impossible s.p.a.ce.

Execration, vituperation Call your curses, raise them high Bolodo Man live in love gold fine gold Bolodo Man live in love pearl and emarald Fulmination, imprecation Curse him up and Curse him down Curse him neck and Curse him thigh Curse him heel and Curse him crown Bolodo Man live in love gold fine gold Bolodo Man live in love pearl and emarald.

Parnalee stood on his cot, straining his restraints, hunched over, slapping his shovel hands against his ma.s.sive thighs, his burring ba.s.so waking echoes until his words got lost in them.

Thump them, dump them Down among the dead men Ekkeri akkari oocar ran Down among the dead men Bolo Bolo B'lodo Man Down among the dead men Blood and bone, heart and stone Down among the dead men Fillary fallary hickery pen Down among the dead men Blackery luggary lammarie Eat the brain, the bod dy Gut and liver, black kid ney Rowan rumen mystery Down among the dead men The Curse Song went on and on, the transportees taking turns at soloing, their curses growing more extravagant, more surreal as each dipped into his or her culture to surpa.s.s the contribution of the last. The rest belted out the refrain until the hold rocked with it. Round and round, Churri playing variations on his verses, the Omperiannas adding flourishes, round and round until, finally, the transportees collapsed in exhaustion and laughter and fell into extravagant speculation about where Bolodo was going to dump them.

"Yo, I remember you. May's a.s.s."