"Unlikely. We closed that search more than a decade ago. But he could have been brought back, at leasttheoretically." No, that would be pointless; the kidnapper wouldn't have dared to keep the boy on Oroga. Too close to Curdova, and his wrath. My son is of Elwerean blood. Now that he's grown, it wouldn't be possible to conceal him among the fieldhands and lowers. He would stand out. Still...

"Tell him I'll take it under advis.e.m.e.nt."

"Yes, senhor. May I suggest that you begin your morning workout? Senhor Delgado is not your equal with the blade, but..."

"But there's no sense in giving him any advantage, eh?" In fact, Delgado's skill with a blade wasn't close to Curdova's. Curdova could handle him easily.

Hmm... that might be useful; a bit of embarra.s.sment on the field of honor, perhaps a scar in an awkward place, might teach Fernando Delgado not to drop sneering comments about Miguel Ruiz de Curdova's wasting money in the search for his son.

The search was probably useless, granted. It was almost certain that the kidnapper had killed the boy when Curdova had refused to pay the ransom for the infant's return, all those years ago.

But, perhaps, the kidnapper still lived. For that reason alone Curdova had allowed Amos van Ingstrand to continue as chief of the Protective Society, often throwing support van Ingstrand's way when another delegate advocated putting someone less harsh in. It wasn't necessary that Elwere's main agent in Lower City be a s.a.d.i.s.tic pig. Simple ruthlessness could keep the lowers and the bourgeois in line; the brutality of Amos van Ingstrand was superfluous.

But I will want a s.a.d.i.s.tic pig available, if they ever find the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who stole the boy, he thought, once again.

Someday, he thought, someday...

CHAPTER FIVE:.

"Make It Stop Hurting..."

It's different on other worlds, but on Oroga, daytime is when you can go outside. Only daytime. Night is a time to stay inside. Because of the t'Tant.

T'Tant are intelligent and gentle during the day, when the plant parts of their brains are enlivened by the sun. They circle in the sky, chirruping merrily, and bask on rocks, always spreading their wings to allow their green upper surfaces maximum exposure to the sunlight. All they need to keep their plant brains happy is sunlight, and, perhaps, the antics of the humans or schrift below to amuse them while they fly.

During the day, they're harmless. They react to an attack by fleeing, or by using their levitating ability to repel the attack. Hurt another creature? Never; that wouldn't be amusing at all.

At night, though, the plant part of the brain shuts down, and the animal takes over.

They turn vicious. They hunt. And while their favorite prey are vrasti, the small, six-legged herbivores that eat both wild and cultivated valda, t'Tant can eat just about anything with blood in its veins. The t'Tant have good digestion.

They're dangerous, but they are an important part of Oroga's ecology; without the t'Tant, the vrasti wouldsoon eat all the valda plants.

Back when I was younger, when Carlos explained all this to me, I came up with the obvious question: Why didn't the Elweries simply have the vrasti exterminated? That would increase the valda yield-and take care of the t'Tant at the same time.

He referred me to a book on Orogan ecology. It's very complicated, and I don't remember it all, but part of the cycle involves vrasti eating valda, then leaving their droppings in the field, which contain bacteria that attach themselves to the valda plant's roots, a bacterium which helps the valda plant take nutrients from the soil, but which can't survive long outside of the vrasti's gut.

No vrasti would mean no vrasti intestinal bacteria. Which would mean no valda, or, at least, a vastly reduced harvest. The Elweries wouldn't like that.

No t'Tant would result in-temporarily-a lot of very fat vrasti, who could easily finish off millions of dunams of valda fields, which would soon mean no valda.

And the Elweries wouldn't like that, either. Which is why they forbid the killing of t'Tant.

And-during the daylight hours, at least-t'Tant are a sapient species, just like humans, schrift, paraschrift, poncharaire, cetaceans... and airybs, if you're willing to stretch a point. Which is why the Thousand Worlds prohibits their slaughter, and why the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department prohibits the import of power weapons onto Oroga. One of the reasons that the Elweries suffer the Protective Society's existence is the unwritten agreement between Elwere and the Society that the Society will keep power weapons out of the hands of the populace.

Muscle-powered projectile weapons-slingshots, bows, crossbows-are allowed; a t'Tant's levitating ability can deflect their projectiles. But the t'Tant's powers aren't great enough to deflect fast-moving bullets or silcohalcoid wires.

Granted, the Commerce Department looks the other way when a case of powerguns, blithely marked FARM MACHINERY, arrives for shipment into Elwere itself-after all, the Elweries know where their wealth comes from; their power weapons are used to put down fieldhand uprisings, not kill t'Tant.

But lowers and buzhs are not permitted power-weapons. Which is why we all stay inside at night.

Or, occasionally, wish we could.

I moved quietly through the night, my shoulderbag strapped tightly to my back, my ears primed for the sound of wings flapping through the sky.

I'm sure I looked silly; the nightgoggles that Carlos must have stolen out of Elwere and that I had stolen from Carlos made me look, well, goggle-eyed.

I didn't mind; there was n.o.body out to see.

Digitized, reduced to the simpleminded on-off pulses of the goggles' circuitry, and then enhanced, displayed on the twin screens, the night had an eerie quality to it, as though all of Lower City glowed from its own light.

Overhead, the stars were bright pinp.r.i.c.ks of orange in a pastel-blue sky. That was the way the goggles handled light: the brightest objects were colored red, those of the second magnitude orange or yellow, allthe way down to a deep, rich blue that indicated blackness.

The only trouble with nightgoggles is that they cut down on your peripheral vision; I had to keep my head moving from side to side, always wondering if the next thing to swim into view would be a stooping t'Tant.

I turned to look up at Elwere, spread across half the sky. Elwere was alive in the dark. Through thousands of plexi windows, light pulsed crimson. The rainbow walls were still rainbows in the dark, but the colors were now different shades of orange and red, cascading through all the tones of that part of the spectrum.

Looking at Elwere was like looking at another world.

I forced myself to pay attention to what I was doing. It didn't take much effort; I knew that I had to be careful. Though, with a bit of luck, there would be no t'Tant over the city tonight. After all, the vrasti had almost all been exterminated in the city, their nests found and burned; there would be little to hunt.

But there were still some nests at the edge of town, where the valda fields started.

I scanned the dotted blue sky. Off near the horizon, three yellow specks circled over a distant valda field.

As I watched, one stooped, skimming below the horizon for a moment, then climbed back into the sky, wheeling over its hunting grounds.

I walked on. As I reached the foot of Baker's Row, I ducked into a doorway, trying to ignore the light and sounds from inside the barred windows.

That's the nice thing about being a buzh, I guess: visiting. When they visit each other late in the day, it's understood that the visitor will spend the night safely within his host's house, protected by solid doors and iron bars. When times are good in Middle City, the night-long parties must be fun.

Even in bad times, it must be nice to spend an evening with a friend.

After walking down Baker's Row, I pa.s.sed by Joy Street. There, the sounds were louder than usual, the music gayer. In the afternoon, Joy Street was frequented partly by buzhes, but mainly by the lower cla.s.ses of 'port employees. At night, it was the turn of pouch-heavy shipmen and the higher-ranking Commerce Department people; only they could afford the price of an all-night orgy behind the barred windows of a fancy Joy Street house.

An orange shape pa.s.sed over me, less than a hundred meters overhead; I dove under a porch, retrieving a concussior from my pack. A concussior isn't a powergun, but it just might serve the purpose, if my timing was right, and if I was very lucky. It would have to detonate within a meter or so of the t'Tant's body-a concussior's explosion is mainly light and sound-and that was unlikely. I'd never heard of anyone successfully using a concussior to take on a t'Tant; I'd never heard of anyone trying.

But if I was attacked, the concussiors were my only chance. I shivered as I crouched there, my thumb on the detonator.

Seconds pa.s.sed, although it felt like hours.

Nothing. Maybe the t'Tant hadn't seen me; its attention could have been elsewhere.

I peered out. Half a kilometer away, the orange t'Tant flapped through the royal-blue sky. It hadn't seen me.I rolled out from under the porch, brushed myself off, and continued toward Elren's shop.

Generally, when you're burglarizing, the best way to enter a building is from the roof. Not necessarily through the roof-although that's often good-but from it. It's just a matter of applied hominid psychology; our species is used to attacks from ground level. People don't tend to think of the second or third stories as being as vulnerable.

I'd never burglarized at night before; I'd never been out at night before. During the day, though, there's another advantage to going in through the top: humans tend to be interested in what's at their eye level and below; looking up is an acquired behavior, not a natural one.

Climbing up to the third story wasn't difficult; I worked my way around to the back of the building, strapped on my ankle and shin spikes, and then slipped on my climbing gloves.

The gloves were awfully well made; I had cut and st.i.tched them myself. Genuine cowhide, shrunk to fit skin-tight, each glove containing three sewed-in, spike-tipped steel bars, curved to accommodate the outer three fingers of each hand. It left me a bit clumsy, but I could still manipulate with my thumb and forefinger, while hanging from a sheer face, as long as I could dig the spikes in.

A quick glance at the sky, and I scurried up the side of the building like a spider.

I was breathing hard as I pulled myself up to the roof and stretched out flat on my back, my eyes searching the sky, my ears primed for any sound.

There were a few t'Tant off in the distance, but they were too far away to worry about.

Good.

I picked my way through the rubble and pipe scattered across the roof. There's always a trapdoor of some sort leading to the roof; it took me only a couple minutes to find it.

At first, it looked good: a heavy steel plate, the hinges heavily shrouded, with a pull-ring in its center.

I pulled, but nothing happened. Not surprising; it was likely deadbolted from the inside.

Oh, well, life isn't supposed to be easy. I'd have to do it the hard way.

I walked to the side of the building away from the street and unstrapped my bag, laying it gently on the roof. I pulled off my gloves and dropped them on the bag. They'd served their purpose.

I took a length of rope and my coilsaw from the bag, put the saw between my teeth while I tied a bowline in one end of the rope, then took a quick eye measure of the distance from the edge of the roof to the corner window. It was about a meter and a half to the bottom of the window; I'd want the loop to be just at roof level.

I fed the other end of the line through the lip, and belayed it to two jutting pipes. Standing in the loop would be idiotic; I could easily fall over. On the other hand, hanging upside down wasn't going to be fun, but I could stand it for the few minutes it would take for the saw to cut through two or three of the bars on a window.

After another scan of the sky, I tightened the loop around my ankles and pushed off the edge of the building.I looked inside. The room was empty, save for a few rolled rugs hanging from the floor. My head started to pound as I hung there, but I ignored it as I wound the saw around a bar and then waited, listening.

There hadn't been any lights in the building, or any sounds, but it was always best to take the extra moment to make sure.

Nothing. Pulling first on one handle of the coilsaw, then the other, it took me a scant minute to slice through the bar. It was low-grade steel. Understandable; it was intended to keep out t'Tant, not me.

Another minute, and I cut my first slice through the second bar, then started on the second slice. This was going to be a bit tricky; there were lights in some of the other houses, and I didn't want either of the bars to clang on the ground below.

Working quickly but carefully, I sawed almost all of the way through the bar, until it dangled by a thin shred of steel. I gave the other bar the same treatment, then put the saw back in my mouth as I bent upward on first one bar, then the other, working them back and forth until they both snapped loose in my hands.

I slipped them inside the window until I felt them touch floor. Leaving both bars propped against the windowsill, I pulled myself back up to the roof, intending to take a few minutes to get my breath back before going inside.

Intending to... I heard the rush of air from behind, and threw myself down between two pipes, the t'Tant's claws missing me by scant centimeters.

It wheeled around the sky, readying itself for the next pa.s.s.

I didn't wait around to see if it would be luckier this time; I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my shoulderbag, grabbed onto the rope, jumped over the edge of the roof, and swung in through the gap into the room.

My shoulderbag bouncing out of my hands, I landed on all fours in the deserted room, then quickly got to my feet and moved to the side of the window. The gap between the leftmost remaining bar and the edge of the window was half a meter-not enough for the t'Tant to fly through, with its wings extended, but more than enough for it to drop through with its wings folded, if it got up enough speed and aimed its body correctly, counting on its levitating ability to make last-moment minor corrections.

If it could think of that. Which I doubted, but wasn't going to bet my life against.

I picked up one of the steel bars. If it tried to get in, I might be able to knock it back outside before those razor-sharp claws sliced me into thin strips.

Maybe.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Nothing. That was good; the t'Tant had given up.

Retrieving and donning my shoulderbag, I walked to the door and put my ear to it. No sound from the other side. Slowly, I opened the door, stepped out, then closed it behind me.

The hallway was a royal blue, lit only by vague red traces of starlight peeping under the three doorways that led to outside rooms.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were blue outlines, barely visible. There's only so much that nightgoggles can do; this wasn't nearly enough light to see by. I took my flash from my pouch, dialed it to low by touch,and thumbed it on.

Much better. In its crimson light, the hallway leaped into clarity. It was narrow, about forty meters long, with rooms opening up on both sides. There was a staircase at either end; I moved quietly toward the nearer.

At a thin scuttling on the stone floor behind me, I spun around, my improvised bludgeon raised.

Nothing. Just bare floor, a wall table set underneath a painting, and a closed door leading to the room beyond.

I shrugged. It had sounded like a vrasti's claws. Nothing to be worried about, although the presence of vrasti marked Elren as a lousy housekeeper.

I smiled. Too bad for her.

Still moving silently, I worked my way down the hall, tiptoed down a wide stairway, and crossed to the door of the room where Elren and I had done our business.

I turned the doork.n.o.b. Actually, I'd expected it to be locked, but it opened at a touch.

Strange. I walked inside.

Using the bar to probe at the rug in front of me, I worked my way over to the desk. There was no sign of b.o.o.by traps or alarms.

I shrugged. I guess Elren trusted her guards and locks in the daytime, and the predatory t'Tant at night.

The desk locks were Earthmade Yales-Model XXVI, Catalog #339837(A) in the Montgomery Sears catalog, in case you're interested-which raised another smile. .Those are fine locks, so fine and so popular that Carlos had given me half a year's worth of training on how to pick just that make and model.

I took my lockpicking kit out of the bag and used the thin plastic probe to feel around in the s.p.a.ce between drawers, but there wasn't anything. No triggers, no wires, nothing.

Oh well. I brought out my lockpicks and got down to work.

The top drawer took me only a couple of minutes. Inside were a few odd coins, a small wooden box filled with what looked like diamonds but what I was sure were only yags, a scattering of flimsies, a bottle of pills, and the other sorts of valueless detritus you'd expect to see in a desk drawer.