Death of a Starship (4 page)

He wasn’t here studying anything,
he just didn’t know where else to go. His training cadre’s suite
was shut down for cleaning, so he’d come here. He was looking at a
randomly-selected virteo about the nut trade on Fentress-IIb when
Old Anatid found him.

Golliwog suspected that Anatid was
younger than Froggie, but the mentor had been through something
somewhere that had fried a lot of his systems, both human-norm
biological and bione enhanced. The mentor’s skin was puckered with
worm-track scars, and he sometimes smelled of ozone. All through
Golliwog’s life, Old Anatid had disappeared for a few days every
month or so for deep medical treatment. The Navy wouldn’t waste
this much effort on a bione if he wasn’t exceptionally valuable,
but Old Anatid had a way with the Golliwogs of Powell
Station.

Golliwog wasn’t certain what else
went on at Powell Station, but the training of the bione classes
clearly consumed a large amount of attention, resources and energy.
Old Anatid was part of that.

“
It’s always a test, boy,” said
Old Anatid, dragging a chair from a nearby carrel.

Golliwog shut off the virteo. “I
know.”

“
What would you do cut off from
support on a public station? Or in a dirtside city?”

Golliwog smiled. “Is that a
training question?”

“
No.” Anatid waved vaguely. “No
more than everything else is in this life. They could have given
you a bunk assignment and a meal chitty. Everyone else on station
has one. They’re letting you dangle, boy.”

“
And so I dangle, sir.”

Old Anatid watched him for a while.
Golliwog stared back – he was quite good at that. It wasn’t the
cold-eyed assessment of Dr. Yee, or a surgeon about to replace his
long bones. There was something more like fondness, even kinship in
that look.

“
You’ll be briefed...eventually,”
Anatid finally said. “But if it were me going out right now, I
might take some interest in the xenic question.”

Golliwog’s training had included an
excellent education. He could speak six languages, service a
c-drive or a gravimetric trap generator, and synthesize poisons
from over two hundred Terran-standard plants. He wasn’t used to
being completely uninformed about something. “The xenic question,
sir?”

“
You’re in a library. Use it. Just
know there’s been some quiet whispers of concern lately, in certain
very high offices.” Old Anatid stood up, patted Golliwog on the
head and left.

‡

patron17: tell me about
xenics

Library: Would you like a
definition?

patron17: yes

Library: Xenic, n. and adj., One of
or pertaining to nonhuman intelligences rumored to be acting on
human affairs and conducting espionage and sabotage within Imperial
space.

patron17: are they real

Library: The xenic influence has
never been verified. Existence of xenics has never been
conclusively demonstrated.

patron17: why do people
believe

Library: Many reasons. These
reasons include cultural paranoia, caution in the face of a hostile
environment, and the apparent human need for an external enemy.
There are also chains of circumstantial evidence which can be
accounted for by assuming xenic influence.

patron17: what is the xenic
question

Library: In its simplest form, the
xenic question asks whether xenic intelligences exist.

patron17: tell me about the more
complicated forms of the xenic question

Library: A librarian will assist
you shortly. Please remain where you are.

‡

Albrecht: Halfsummer, Gryphon
Landing

Men were stacked in the godown like
inventory, spread out on shelving that ran six layers high,
originally configured for something about half a meter tall and
slightly longer than the average male human being. Albrecht had
scored an upper bunk, not trapped beneath four or five layers of
sweating, snoring, muttering indigents, with the odd bed wetter
thrown in for variety. Five credits was a lot for a mattress fee,
but it bought him a day cycle’s worth of residency permit. Gryphon
Landing wasn’t kind to the truly homeless.

At least he knew something about
ship parts and tools. It was living, more or less. Albrecht had no
idea how many of the mass of torpid men around him scored their
five creds a day. From the dreamtime moaning that went on all
night, he didn’t want to know.

It was hot, of course. Everything
was hot on Halfsummer. And the godown had no climate control, just
vent fans high up in the rafters among the flittermice and the
feral cats. The lucky ones around him snored their way through the
eye-watering fug, but a lot of nights, like this one, Albrecht
found the stench overwhelming. Every time he opened his mouth to
breathe, he felt like he was drowning in sweat, spit, blood,
jizz.

At least he had air above him. If
the top bunks were purgatory, the lower bunks were hell. All of
them were here for their sins, of course. Planetary citizens had
other places to go. Women had other places to go. His neighbors
were men who’d tumbled down the gravity well one too many times,
without a ticket back up, without the right money or certifications
or skills or state of sobriety to climb Jacob’s ladder back to the
spare, environmentally-conditioned heaven of a berth on a ship
heading outsystem.

He wasn’t like them, Albrecht told
himself. He was a better man, a smarter man, just down on his luck.
What kept him awake, even more than the salty, sweaty reek that
enveloped him like a mother’s love, was the thought that everyone
in this place believed the same thing about himself.

‡

Morning found Albrecht on the
street again, all his worldly goods in a thigh pack strapped to the
leg of his shipsuit like always. The stupid codelock key hadn’t
fit, so he was carrying it around in his hand. It had occurred to
him to wonder if the Public Safety patrols might interpret it as
weapon, sort of a fistpack or sap.

He decided he didn’t care. It was a
bright, sunny day, with those strange, flat Halfsummer clouds in
the sky. Gryphon Landing was as low and crumpled as ever, skyline
marred by half-built buildings marooned in the last equity crash,
lined with peculiar puffy-leaved trees that smelt like old tea
bags.

Something rumbled overhead,
staggering through the peak overpressure point of the local speed
of sound. Albrecht didn’t bother to look up anymore – nothing flew
that wanted his sorry butt on board. Instead he turned the codelock
key over in his hand.

Why would someone file off the ship
name but not the keel number? That was fairly pointless. Anyone
with nöosphere access could research the keel easily
enough.

What the
hell
, he thought. It was free day at the
library. He could go research the keel number himself. Maybe this
had been on a ship he’d built a model of once. The damned steward
had dropped his models in the mass converter on the
Princess Janivera
, along
with everything else Albrecht couldn’t carry away in two hands. At
any rate, that gave him something to do in the hours before the
market got into full swing once more. Spacers weren’t early morning
shoppers, and neither were the sort of people who catered to
them.

‡

An hour later he was only slightly
better informed, but somewhat more curious. Albrecht sat on a park
bench in front of the library complex, under some local tree
sporting fat leaves like green hands with too many fingers. It made
for a complex, mottled shade, which he rather enjoyed, despite the
stale incense odor.

Well-groomed people strolled by in
the pale pastel kilts and blouses which were the local fashion for
those with money to shop. None of them looked at Albrecht, which
was fine with him. He had time to think and relax a little in the
shade before heading down to the reeking chaos of the market to
make his day’s nut.

Strangely, the keel number
had traced to a
Coatimundi
-class fast freighter.
Civilian hull type, which argued that the codelock key had been
repurposed from its original Naval application. Odd, but not
unheard of, especially by people who ran fast and loose at the
fringes of the world of certified, inspected, insured
commerce.

That class used the old Group
7 c-drives, with the cockeyed Lyne arms that never lasted more than
twenty percent of their rated duty cycle without an overhaul – or
worse. The keel his codelock key had come off of was originally
commissioned as the
Jenny’s Diamond
Bright
out of Panshin, a system in the
Karazov sector almost two hundred lights rimward, halfway across
the Empire. Another curious aspect of this business was that
Jenny
was reported lost
about twenty baseline years past, in transit between Velox and
4a-Rho Palatine. Also in the Karazov sector. He wasn’t up to
accurately converting Imperial baseline to local sidereal in his
head, but Albrecht figured that couldn’t be more than forty years
ago local. Thirty or forty years later, an essentially undamaged
codelock key shows up in a market two hundred lightyears distant
from the ship’s last port.

He turned it over in his hand. This
key didn’t look like it had survived a disaster.

Albrecht knew insurance fraud when
it bit him in the ankle. Not that it was his business. No one in
authority on Halfsummer cared what he had to say about anything
anyway. He just found himself wondering how it all worked.
Intellectual curiosity was one of his few remaining
luxuries.

That was when two men in the dark,
bulging kilts and leather coats of Public Safety stopped in front
of his bench.

“
Been using the
library, friend?” asked one of them.
He
looks like the smart one
, thought Albrecht
– his eyes were more than a thumb’s width apart. But in Albrecht’s
experience, no one who used the term “friend” that way had ever
actually acted like they meant what they said.

“
Yes sir.” Albrecht smiled his
dimmest smile. “Checking my mail.”

“
You get mail, bunny boy?” That
was the piggy-eyed one. “From who?”

Albrecht figured he was in for a
bad cop-bad cop routine. It seemed a bit much for just sitting on a
park bench. “Mail from my copious friends and admirers, okay? Look,
I got an appointment. Is there anything else I can do to help you
gentlemen?”

“
Gentlemen, he says.” The smart
one glanced at piggy. “Yeah. Come on over to the Public Safety
Offices with us. Watch commander wants a word with you.”

“
Am I under arrest?” It was
stupid, he knew, but this was broad daylight in the nice part of
town. They weren’t likely to beat him senseless in front of the
consuming classes strolling the sidewalks.

Piggy snorted. “Not
yet.”

“
Then I think I’ll be going.” He
stood up, smiled, and tried to shoulder his way between the two
cops. That lasted about two paces, then Albrecht was on the ground
with a shock stick humming in his ear.

“
So kind of you to agree to assist
us in our investigations,” said piggy, leaning over into Albrecht’s
limited and pain-hazed line of sight. Someone’s pastel boots
stepped over his outstretched arm without pausing.

‡

Golliwog: Powell Station, Leukine
Solar Space

Golliwog arrived at Dr. Yee’s
office door at 05:54 hours. It had been an interesting night, or at
least informative. He’d left the library a little too quickly, but
eventually discovered the ident chip in his arm entitled him to
meals at the unrestricted dining halls scattered throughout Powell
Station.

It was the first time he’d moved
unescorted through the public areas of the station. “Public” was a
relative term, of course. Powell Station was an Imperial Navy base.
Deep Navy, no cooperation with the Imperial Guards or civilian
contractors here. Well, except perhaps for Froggie and Old Anatid.
Their status had never been clear to him.

Even among uniformed Naval
personnel, Golliwog still stood out. He was about two meters,
fifteen cents tall, with that certain bulk about him that came from
hormone treatments, muscle grafts, and a hideous investment in
physical training. But Golliwog could tell from the way other
people carried themselves, the way they walked and moved and how
their arms swung, that he could have torn any of them limb from
limb – even the hard men and women in the dirtside fatigues with
the black-on-blue decorations sewn above their pockets. And most of
the people he passed clearly saw the same thing. Golliwog moved in
a current of muttering silence, always a few decimeters more space
around him than the people he passed among gave each
other.

He decided he liked the
effect.

Now he was in front of Dr. Yee’s
office, counting the passers-by who turned into the corridor, saw
him standing there, and remembered sudden business elsewhere that
didn’t take them too close to him. He was up to seven when the
hatch said, “Come in, please,” and slid back.