DarkShip Thieves (21 page)

"You shouldn't have left the doctor so soon," I said.

"What?" He sounded as if I were speaking a foreign language, and didn't follow the conversation. "You can't take off, Thena. Please unlock the door. Put the stairs down."

"No."

"You have to. What are you going to do?"

"Go to Earth," I said. My reasoning, not clear but intense, in my room before I decided to come here, erupted out of me in semi-coherent words, "I'll never have a place in Eden," I said. "I'm not . . . I'm not a cat, or a Nav."

"You're a mechanic!" he said. "What do you mean you have no place?"

"I don't . . ." I almost said I didn't belong to anyone, but what kind of reasoning was that? I didn't belong to anyone on Earth, either, except to Father and I'd rather not belong to him. "I'll never be at home here."

"Rubbish!" he said. More of the labored breathing and something that sounded like a gasp. Also a hiss, steady, intermittent. It sounded, I thought, like the torch I used in welding ceramite, while working. But it was not going steady. It was hiss, stop, hiss, stop, hiss. "You are home."

"No. I could . . . If I lived here my whole life, I'd still not be home."

Something like cursing, low, under his breath. A mutter, mutter, mutter that could not be fully understood. And then a sound like something hitting the door hard.

"I don't want to betray Eden," I said in a rush. "I don't want to betray you. I'll go back and land in a deserted place. I'll destroy the ship. I'll—"

"Nonsense," the word barely audible through labored breathing. "Athena Hera Sinistra, unlock this damn door."

I didn't know why. I didn't know how, but I knew—knew with absolute certainty that he was outside that door, that he'd done something to bypass the genlock, that only the additional lock was keeping him out.

I couldn't let him in. I had no idea how he could have got up to the door. With the stairs retracted—which they were by virtue of the ship being closed—only way up was by rolling a cumbersome ladder up. Had Kit done that? The thought of Kit, as I'd last seen him, still recovering from that wound, climbing a ladder was not something I wanted to contemplate.

What would possess him to do that? The foolish man must truly feel he had some duty to me.

I rushed across the cabin to the board and glared at the indexes for readiness. It was almost—almost ready to go. Almost. I closed my eyes and made an executive decision. Ettiene always says sometimes you need to close your eyes and say
what the hell.
Of course normally he means this just before jumping off some sort of peak, headed for almost sure death. But this—but in the details—was the same.

It was as if I'd been run off my feet and peace keepers were on my tail, and ready to book me. I had to get out of Eden forever or allow Kit to condemn us both to sheer hell.

"I will never betray you," I said, hoping he was still listening to the com, and I shoved both fingers on the starting buttons. Below me the engines hicupped and chocked, then hummed their starting song. Now, now, now, any second now, they'd kick to full life and take off.

"Damned idiot." The words were clear, very clear. They were also roared. And followed by a hiss like a thousand torches cutting at the door.

And then the door . . . well, it looked like it caved inward, followed by Kit tumbling into the control chamber. He was pale as death, so pale that it looked impossible for him to be standing. He wore the pants he'd been wearing before, and a rumpled tunic that looked like he'd rescued it unvibroed from his laundry pile. Which was probably exactly what he'd done.

His hair was wild and uncombed, his teeth clenched tight together, visible through lips parted in a rictus that wasn't a smile. He had a five-o'clock calico shadow. He held a burner in his hand. It was cocked at full power.

A burner. Cocked to full burn.
The words formed as I was sailing through the air, in best ballet form, my foot arched gracefully towards his burner hand.

And my foot was caught in his hand and I was on my back on the floor. Again.

Only this time, unlike our sparring in the Cathouse, he didn't stop to make pithy remarks. Instead, he had gone past me—
cat speed,
I thought,
the reason cats can't duel non-cats
—and he was at the controls, pushing the cancel buttons. Beneath me, the engines spluttered and died down.

I dove at his ankles, pulled. He fell with a sickening thud. He crashed as if he'd not had time to prepare—which was wrong.
Cats always fall on their feet.
No, wait. That was Earth cats. Kit was all homo sapiens.

I looked at his face. He'd fallen on his back, and he was still, his eyes wide.
I've killed him.
But I had a suspicion that, just like vampires, Kit couldn't be killed by anything short of separating his head from his body and burying the two on different sides of a river. Hell, for him, different
ends
of a river.

As if to prove me right, his chest rose once, deeply, then fell, he turned to look at me, his eyes wide open.
Thena.

He was in my mind. I pushed back, pushed him away from controlling my body, dragged myself to my knees, forced myself up to the controls, reached for the buttons.

Thena, no. Damn you to all the hells of the ancients.
What kind of man thought that at you in a soft, sweet way, as if he were gentling down a child.

Whatever kind of man he was, he was on me. More or less literally, pinning me between himself and the controls and doing something, fast, fast to the keyboard. His fingers danced the entrechat on the keys, something beeped with a final sound.

I turned on Kit, without pausing to think. I flailed against him, all teeth and nails. He'd turned off the ship, and now I was here forever. I was trapped in Eden for eternity. A stranger. Lost. I'd never see the ocean again, I'd never see the sky of Earth. I'd never glide, silent and sure above sleeping Syracuse seacity. I'd never . . .

Hush, hush, hush.
His hands held my wrists. He held me clamped down just off the control panel on the surface that, in the Cathouse he used to balance a reader or—sometimes—to put his feet on, while he shepherded the progression of the ship through its slow path to the powertrees and back again. I saw him there, as I'd seen him so many times on board the Cathouse. In a month—or less—he'd be gone on his route. I never see him in the Cathouse again. Eventually the whole problem with the Klaavils would die down, and he would be married again. And I . . . I might get to detail their ship.

Thena this is not the time.
I had no idea what he'd got from my mind, but he was holding me tight against the panel, his hands almost cutting circulation to my wrists, his body holding me immobile. Incongruously, his mental voice was full of tenderness and laughter. And I tried to twist out of his grasp and—

The side of my work suit was soaked. Looking down, I realized there was a blood stain on me and Kit's dark tunic—though it barely showed it, being a silver grey—was dark down the side.

Kit your wound, you—

Not the time.
His mental voice now sounded clipped, short.

We must—

"Cat Klaavil? Mistress Sinistra?"

We sprang apart as if we'd been doing something indecent, which I suppose we had—mind linked and pressed together—and turned to look at the man who'd come in. He was not the bureaucrat who had received us. This was a younger and more composed model, the vigorous and purposeful category, with dark hair and a nicely fitting uniform. From the steely spark in his eyes, he was the sort of man one expected to see in history holos framed over some caption like
the general on the eve of the battle.

Instead he was a second class bureaucrat, manning a control tower at night. The chasm between his abilities and his actual post clearly galled him. He strode towards us with the look that—were we an enemy army—would have made us lay down our arms, and possibly weep for redemption.

We weren't an enemy army. Kit let go of me and stood straight, squaring his shoulders. His cat eyes, now easily readable to me, reflected utter disdain for this intruder. "Yes?"

"You are charged with crimes against the board of energy—vandalism of property and attempted theft. We can get a judge on the case, or we can total a bill for the damages and send you the accounting. Do you have some doubt about your legal responsibility?"

If Kit managed to look anymore disdainful, the sheer force of his haughtiness would turn the functionary into a puddle on the floor. "None whatsoever," he said. "I will give you my account."

The functionary's eyes sparked back. I knew that look. A wolf smelling a tasty sheep. "It is likely to come to around a million hydras."

Kit's shoulders went yet more square. The side of his tunic was now dark, from the shoulder down. I wondered if the functionary didn't realize Kit was bleeding. I did. I could smell the sickening-sweet scent of blood. "If I do not have enough, you can indenture me for the remaining."

"I will."

"This is nonsense," I snapped. "I'm the one who should be indentured for the remaining," I said. "I am the one who tried to steal a ship. Not him."

Now the functionary turned to me, and his features managed to reflect even more disdain than Kit had bent on him. Kit, meanwhile, was not even looking at me, but straight ahead, his features steely.

"Did Cat Klaavil not sign a contract of responsibility for you, as his legal ward?"

"Yes," I said, but then because this made no sense. "But it doesn't matter. I am of age, I have a job. If there is a bill to pay, I should be the one paying it." I made fifty hydras a month. Kit made a thousand or so per trip. His trips took . . . Three to six months? Everyone tried for the times when the Earth was closer, but if you wanted to keep bringing in pods, you had to work year around. How many could he take a year? I know they had downtime between the trips. It tried to calculate it. As I was in the middle of trying to figure out how many zeros to carry on my way to realizing I'd just signed Kit's life earnings away, I heard Kit say, "It's irrelevant. She is my ward. I will pay. You may call me at home. If I am not there, you may leave a message either directly or with my father."

"Kit."

This is not the time, Thena.

But you can't. You didn't do anything. This will take your entire life earnings.

Not.The.Time.

I stared at him, but he just looked ahead. "Feel free to call me with the total," he said. "I shall discuss the means of settling it, then." And with that haughty, looking-above it all expression he strode out of the ship.
Come, Thena.

I wouldn't have obeyed. After all, what I really felt like doing was test my theory of the vulnerable points of the human male on the bureaucratic twit who was facing Kit. But if I killed him—and I might very well, if I got going—then I would stick Kit with the price for the blood geld. So I ran after Kit as he marched from the ship and down the steps the twit bureaucrat had, at least, had the decency to provide.

I caught up with him by his flyer, which was parked just steps from the ship, which meant that he had somehow managed to fly into an area that was technically closed to traffic. I wondered if he'd flow through the building. I was sure that this was impossible, that some of the doors were too small.

However, I was about to get a lesson in how wrong I could be, when he got in, sat down and barked at me. "Buckle."

For the next two minutes we flew—sometimes upside down or sideways through the doors and across the halls of the Energy Board Building, until we exited the main door. We flew over flyers being repaired and sideways between the desks of the processing office, while I held my breath. Instead of heading to the garage, the way we had when we arrived, he took the way up as I did when I met him in front of the building.

As soon as we were through the front door, Kit landed in a parking space, pulled on the communicator pin he was wearing on his sleeve, and said, "Doctor Bartolomeu."

By the time the doctor answered, his voice sounding tinny through the pin, "Christopher?" Kit had opened the door and was throwing up, noisily, onto the pavement. I wanted to hold his head, or smack him for being an idiot, but I couldn't do either. Instead, I spoke into the pin.

"We're outside the Energy Board building," I said. "I think Kit tore open the seam on his wound."

"Drink," the doctor said. He held a cup to Kit's mouth. For a moment—considering the way Kit had behaved for the last hour—I expected Kit to press his lips together, or turn his head away. Instead, he took the cup in his left hand and drank, while the doctor worked on his right side.

We were in the doctor's flyer, a large one—probably originally designed as a carrier van. In contrast with his house, the place—he called it his surgery, like doctors in the ancient British Commonwealth, referring to their offices—was modern and immaculate. All glimmering surfaces and smooth dimatough.

Kit was hooked up to at least three machines and the doctor was doing something to his shoulder that involved glasses and something that looked like tweezers but wasn't. It looked like he was gluing the two halves of the wound together, but he'd snapped at me when I'd asked. "No. I'm seaming them properly together with new-healed growth. Deep seaming this time, unlike last, when I thought I could trust Christopher not to tear his shoulder apart again."

Kit had tried to protest, "But she was going to get herself killed. She was—"

"Shut up," the doctor had ordered. "You don't have the strength to talk and I'd like to keep you alive, heaven knows why."

Kit had lost consciousness before the doctor arrived and despite the fact that he'd been given an injector that was supposed to help him produce more blood, despite the fact that he was hooked up to an intravenous drip that was replenishing his blood, and despite his having another three machines doing who knew what to him, he still looked half dead. The eyelids he shared with the rest of the human race were half-lowered. From beneath it, his nictating eyelids kept trying to close and protect his eyes. He looked . . . miserable, like a child caught playing in the rain and scolded.