A Passage of Stars (6 page)

Lily queried for the berth and departure time of the ship that had left with Heredes. The screen went blank while memory was searched. For all she knew, they had gone on to Tagalong, skipping Station entirely. She would never be able to pick up their trail. But numbers rolled up on the screen, and there it was. The right ident, listed on the Apron Port log, with—and she smiled—a complaint of unauthorized launch duly logged against them by Caenna Harbormaster (H. F. Caenna, controller on duty). Perhaps the complaint had forced them to land at Station to receive clearance directly for a jump window out of system. Whatever the reason, they were there, berthed at M2-11, no departure time listed. And at Station, where ships in the official sections were manacled into place as a safety measure—so regulations stated—it was impossible to leave without authorization.

Lily logged off. Beside her, the sta still punched numbers in, her double-thumbed, four-fingered hand fluent on the keys, and received unacceptable replies.

The M2 berths lay in a stretch of corridor that housed docks and warehouses. The double doors of one warehouse stood open, revealing a hive of silent activity within, pygmies sorting with almost telepathic cooperation through a cargo. At berth 5 two copper-skinned sta towered above a woman dressed in the tunic and belt of a mercenary. They acknowledged Lily as she passed and returned to their light-hearted conversation. The rest of the odd-numbered berths were vacant; green “free” lights advertised space. Two people passed Lily. A cleaning unit backed out of a berth several doors farther along. But at berth 11, Lily saw just the orange “occupied” light, the smooth blankness of the closed lock doors, and the com-panel empty of message or request.

Had she really thought it would be so easy? That she had only to present herself at their door and they would hand Heredes over to her, recognizing her superior claims? Or that, finding an open, unguarded lock, she could walk onto the ship and free him? She realized now that she had never considered what she would do if she found the ship.

The orange light glowed a steady negative at her. She smiled. She would just have to storm them—sometimes speed and surprise was the only tactic when the enemy had the better defensive position. If she was lucky, some of them might be stuck in line at the Portmaster’s office. But they wouldn’t be there forever. She needed Bach. She had to act now.

She took the shortcuts back, narrow alleyways that snaked between the outstretched arms of Station. She had to backtrack to the K5 section before she found the first shortcut; damp and smelling of mold, it led her in a low, dark arc to section B7. A handful of makeshift seals branched off it into unimaginable dwellings, so close to vacuum that each movement must seem an invitation to disaster.

Another alley led from B6 to G2, a short run from there from G4 to F4. In F4, three alleys branched out into dimness. She took the central one, found herself touching moist walls that gave beneath her hands. The floor was rough and broken. Here, where the corridors widened or where some hastily patched break had left space off the main path, people huddled, whispering, trading, watching. In the low light, Lily saw the telltale dapplings of tattoos.

The corridor she entered was unnumbered and unnamed. But from here just one last alley would bring her to the section where she had landed.

The alley was old, broad, and inhabited. Once she stumbled over a child, lying in a shadowed patch of the path. After that she went more slowly. A low, cracked voice begged for a drink. Far ahead, someone screamed. A family had gathered in an open seal that led into a patchworked hovel of one room, plastine ribbing covering old leaks. Bunks crowded two walls; at the third stood a low altar. When they saw Lily, they slid the seal shut. The green phosphorous torches that usually lit, however poorly, the alleys gave way to the inconstant flickering of red. Lily could scarcely see her hands. The screaming, half-sobs now, sounded from just beyond the corner. She paused.

Sounds of a struggle, but an unequal one. Someone striking someone else. A determined but useless resistance. Threats: prison, rape, death.

Lily came around the corner. In the first instant she saw three thugs beating and kicking and ripping the clothes off a child. In the second instant she saw that it was a girl, profusely tattooed, and that the child was fighting with all the frenzy of hopeless panic.

“—think you’re too good for this kind of work,” said the man nearest Lily as he struck the girl across the face. “Getting above yourself, I’d say.” He saw Lily.

She took him out cleanly, before he could react, doubling him over with a kick, striking to the head. He fell heavily to the floor. The tattooed girl shrieked and bit the arm of the woman who was holding her. The other man, jumping back, drew a short blade.

“Let her go,” said Lily.

The woman kicked the girl in the ribs, jerking her arm away, and launched herself at Lily. Lily sidestepped and pushed her into the wall, on the same beat spun backward and kicked the knife out of the other man’s hand. He hesitated. Lily snapped a kick hard into his groin. As he doubled up, grunting, she drove a final kick up into his chin—“Let the momentum go through your target,” Heredes would say—and felt the impact, the shattering of bone. With a high scream of pain, the man fell in a heap clutching his jaw.

The girl had grabbed the knife; now she shouted a warning. Lily felt a hand grip her shoulder; she spun into it with an elbow straight to the woman’s face, and with her hips still turning, a punch solid to the belly. The woman fell, retching.

Lily grabbed the girl’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come on,” she said.

“Shouldna we—” The girl gestured with the knife. The first man shifted on the ground; the woman caught her breath.

“Run,” said Lily, and she ran, tugging the girl along behind her.

They had to push through a group of onlookers. None hindered them, but Lily did not stop until they came out of the alley into the wild disorder of the corridor. She let go of the girl’s arm and strolled as if undisturbed toward the berth the brothers had put into. The girl followed two steps behind her. When they came to an awning that sheltered three children and a rack of knee-length tunics, Lily paused, un-clipping her com-screen.

“Now,” she said. “I’ll buy you something to replace that—” She halted, staring.

The girl stood in the corner of the shop’s portico, shielding herself as well as she could from the street. She had stuck the knife under her belt and with both hands held together her torn shift to cover her abdomen and breasts. The three children had run into the shop, so the girl stood alone under the incandescence of a lighting tube.

She was beautiful, despite, or perhaps because of, the branching intricacy of the tattoos on her face and body. She had that peculiar transparent loveliness that can settle on the most unlikely adolescents, giving them an uncanny quality of perfection. An edge of cloth slipped to reveal the budding swell of a breast, swirled with the yellow and rose and soft green pattern that marked her throat and face.

“That were fast,” said the girl in a matter-of-fact voice that held no self-consciousness.

“What was?”

“That fight were. Whoosh, and gone.”

“It seemed slow to me.” Lily looked pointedly at the rack of clothing. “We’d better get you some new clothes.”

“Why?” said the girl.

“You can’t go around in something that’s ripped to pieces—”

“Why’d you help me?” The girl’s voice had a husky quality much older than her years.

“I couldn’t let them—” Lily faltered. “Whatever they meant to do.”

“They meant to sell me to ya man from B run, as a bed girl. But I wouldna have it.”

“
Sell
you? That’s against the law.”

The girl regarded Lily with disbelief. “Sure, it be against ya law. Be you supposing that ya Security bothers to protect us tattoos?” She shook her head, a wise old soul marking the illusions of the innocent.

Lily, abashed, and knowing that it was perfectly true that prejudice against the Ridanis extended to a double standard in protecting them from such abuses, looked away.

“Anyways,” Paisley continued defiantly, “I got my pride. I mean to be ya technician.”

This choice of vocation surprised Lily enough that she glanced up, appraising the girl. “Better you than me.”

Now the girl looked surprised. “You don’t think it be loony?”

“No, I don’t. Though I don’t suppose it will be easy. Now would you choose one of these tunics?”

“Sure,” said the girl cheerfully, stepping forward to thumb through the rack, drawing out immediately the most expensive sleeveless tunic. “You can call me Paisley. I like ya one.”

“Fine,” said Lily. The shopkeeper came out, the transfer of credits quickly accomplished. Paisley, meanwhile, had changed garments by the simple expedient of putting the new one on over the old and ripping the old one off until it lay in tatters around her feet. The knife had disappeared.

“Sure.” She smoothed the fabric down with one hand. “I do like this.”

“I have to go,” said Lily. “Can you get back to your family all right?”

Instantly the stubborn expression settled in the girl’s face. “Don’t have none,” she declared. “Turned me out. See, I got as much time in ya eddication networks as I could sneak, and I tested and got ya good enough marks to get me into ya school, but ya school said it be not fitting for ya tattoo to set in ya same room with ya unmarked students. Sure, and supposing thems parents were to find out—wouldna none of thems be coming back to ya school after it be known ya tattoo were allowed in.”

Lily winced. “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s wrong. But I have to go. Will you be all right?”

“Sure.” Paisley pulled at one of the crop of bead-encrusted braids that surrounded her face. “I be going with you.”

“You can’t go with me.”

“You in trouble? I know every way around here.”

Lily raised her hands, lowered them. “I’m sorry, Paisley, Good-bye.” She turned and walked away down the corridor.

Paisley followed her, padding along three meters behind, not at all chastened. By pretending to be going on and breaking suddenly into the lock, Lily managed to get the door shut before Paisley could react. She saw, briefly, a look so close to desolation on the girl’s face as the door slid to that she almost reopened the lock then and there, feeling that she had somehow succumbed to the same prejudice that oppressed the Ridanis throughout the Reft.

But she needn’t have worried. When she reappeared with Bach and her duffel bag, Paisley had not moved. The girl’s face brightened when she saw Lily, shifting to astonishment as Bach floated out behind.

“Sure,” she breathed, staring at the robot. “And glory.”

“Hoy,” said Lily. “Okay. Get me to M2 as fast as you can. I’ll pay you for it.”

The girl stiffened. “It ain’t payment. It ain’t right to offer me credit. It be poor of you.” Then, seeing that she had caught Lily off-guard, she smiled. “So come on. I can get you there in three alleys. Quick as ya vacuum through ya leak.”

“Pleasant thought,” muttered Lily.

“But you got to introduce me.”

“Introduce you?”

“To ya ’bot.”

“His name is Bach. Can we go?”

Paisley made a solemn movement halfway between a bow and a curtsey. “Much pleased, min Bach. I be Paisley.” Bach winked lights and made a muted response. “And you?” She looked at Lily.

“My name’s Ransome. Now are you going to show us or not?”

“Sure,” replied Paisley, cheerful again. “Just got to get all squared between us, min Ransome. Seeing as you saved my kinnas and now got my service. Till it be returned, a’course.”

“Your kinnas?”

But Paisley was already off.

She traveled at a run. For one so slender, she had remarkable stamina. Bach had trouble keeping up, and in the locks, he invariably lost his equilibrium and rolled upside down. It did indeed take only three alleys—the longest of which was completely empty, barely lit, and resonant with low hisses and echoing footsteps—one inconvenience with four Security personnel, and two importunate drug dealers to reach M2 section and berth 11. The entire corridor was deserted.

“Night cycle,” said Paisley succinctly as she stared at berth 11’s com-panel. “Why you want in here?”

A muffled beep sounded, and the light on the panel changed to yellow.

“Hoy,” breathed Lily. She whistled a brief command to Bach. He skimmed out to the far wall, opposite the lock. Lily edged out along the wall. When Paisley began to follow, she halted, turning her head.

“Get to the other side,” Lily hissed. “I’m going in.”

The tattooed girl nodded. “What for?”

“A man.”

“Sure,” said the girl, her eyes wide with excitement and understanding. She pushed away from the wall and darted down the corridor.

Another beep; the lock door began to open. Lily stepped out away from the wall and moved closer to the opening lock as if she were simply a passerby. The quick, low exchange of two people conversing sifted out on the air, and one stepped out.

At such close quarters, it—he?—was incontrovertibly alien, as tall as a sta but much thinner, pallid with the suggestion of colors under the skin. Scant yellow hair, not quite like hair, crowned him. He was nothing she had ever seen before.

His glance, sweeping the corridor, seized up abruptly and obviously on Bach. He spoke words to someone unseen behind him and fell into a crouch. From his side he drew some weapon. Aimed it at Bach.

Lily threw herself on him, knocking him down; as they both fell, she flung herself onto one shoulder and rolled in a somersault up to her feet. He lay sprawled, reaching for his gun. Paisley darted forward, grabbed the weapon, and ran on. Lily turned, to face the doorway, turned—

A force like a solid wall of wind struck her. It spun her around as if an arm had shoved her back and sideways. She saw a tall, painfully thin figure in the lock door, weapon in hand. There was a piercing brilliance and a cry from Paisley. Bach began to sing. A hammer came down on her like a fall of rocks and she knew nothing more.