Heaven's Reach (50 page)

H
E EXPECTED TO BE WELCOMED HOME WITH
congratulations, perhaps by Wer'Q'quinn himself, or at least the old squid's senior aides, eager to receive Harry's data and hear about his successful mission.

A damned difficult mission, if truth be told. An epic voyage to one of the worst parts of E Space, where he had prevailed against horrible odds, and even picked up a couple of human-sooner castaways for good measure!

Anticipating acclaim, what he found at Kazzkark Base was chaos.

All the north pole docking bays were full, except a few set aside for official use. Approaching one of those, Harry had to shout his priority code, adding threats until a surly Migration Instituté monitor-drone finally vacated a slot reserved for NavInst craft.

Beyond the starlit scaffolding, he glimpsed myriad sleek refugee ships, tethered in layers from one end of the planetoid to the other, creating a dense, confusing snarl of shadowy forms and glinting strobe lights.

“Ain't it excitin', Dwer?” murmured the girl with the scarred face—Rety—whose eyes gleamed at the sight. “Didn't I promise ya? Stick with me an' I'll get you to civilization! That's what I said. Good-bye smelly ol' Jijo, and hello galaxy! We'll never be dirty, hungry, poor, or bored again.”

Harry exchanged a glance with the other human, the
tall male. Both young savages were clearly out of their depth. But unlike Rety, Dwer seemed to know it. His eyes expressed worried awe at the view outside.

Kinda like the way I feel
, Harry pondered. Starships were packed together like shattered murvva trunks after a bad windstorm on Horst.
The disruptions must've got a lot worse since I left … especially if folks are choosing dumpy old Kazzkark as a place to run away to!

Magnetic grapples settled snugly around his battered survey station, which at last powered down with a relieved groan. Harry, too, exhaled the tension he had carried in his spine ever since departure, sighing deeply.

Home again … such as it is.

Downloading Wer'Q'quinn's data to a portable wafer, he turned and ushered his guests toward the airlock. In normal times, returning from any other mission, this pair would have stirred a sensation at the sleepy base. Hints at a newly discovered sooner infestation would spread quickly, and make the arresting officer famous.

Residual loyalty tugged at Harry. Humans were patrons to his own race, after all. Ostensibly, he wasn't supposed to care about that anymore. But habits were hard to break.

Besides, Dwer and Rety saved my life.

The conflict left him feeling more ambivalent than triumphant as they passed through a short tunnel into the planetoid.

With everything in an uproar, maybe my report about them will just be overlooked.

He decided he could live with that.

The Ingress Atrium was filled with noise and commotion as a mélange of races pushed and jostled, ignoring the delicate rhythms and rituals of racial seniority and interclan protocol as they pressed for admission, hoping for sanctuary from an increasingly unreliable cosmos. Harry's Institute credentials got him through several gates, moving to the front of the queue with his two humans in tow. Still, it took most of a midura to reach the final portal labeled
IMMIGRATION AND QUARANTINE
. Along
the way, he overheard some of the worry and panic fluxing through the Civilization of Five Galaxies.

“—three out of four transfer points in Lalingush Sector show dislocations, or catastrophic domain recombinations,” hissed a tunictguppit trader in GalSeven, exchanging gossip with a rotund p'ort'l whose chest-mounted eye blinked furiously.

The p'ort'l snorted in reply—a rich sound, with multitoned harmonies. “I hear most of the remaining transfer points have been seized by local alliances, who are exacting illegal taxes on any ship attempting to enter or leave. One consequence is vast numbers of stranded merchants, students, pilgrims, and tourists with no way to get home!”

To Harry's surprise, the two young humans didn't seem at all panicky or intimidated by the crowd. Rety grinned happily, stroking the neck of her little urrish “husband,” while Dwer stared at the diversity of sapient life-forms, occasionally leaning over to whisper in the girl's ear, pointing at some type of alien he recognized—perhaps from legends told around a campfire, back on his tribal homeworld—a more cosmopolitan attitude than Harry would have expected. Nevertheless, Dwer betrayed underlying nervousness in the way he clutched his bow and arrows tightly under one arm.

Harry had considered confiscating the crude archery equipment. In theory, prisoners weren't supposed to go around armed. Still, he doubted even the most stickling Galactic bureaucrat would recognize the assortment of twigs, strings, and bits of chipped stone as a weapon.

Speaking of rule sticklers
, he thought, on reaching the main desk. The same sour hoonish official was on duty as last time, and just as obnoxious as ever. Despite the declared state of emergency, Twaphu-anuph flapped his richly dyed throat sac at anyone who showed even the slightest irregularity of documentation, ignoring their protests, sending them back to the end of the line. The hoon seemed frazzled from overwork and strain when Harry stepped up to the desk.

Get ready for a surprise, you gloomy old bureaucrat
,
Harry thought, relishing how his new tail and fur color would shock Twaphu-anuph.

To his disappointment, the hoon barely regarded Harry with a quick scan before looking back down at his monitor screens. Apparently, the pale fur coloration did not alter the official's gestalt of a Terran chimpanzee.

“Ah,
hrr-rrm.
So it is Observer Harms, once again inflicting his unwelcome simian visage on my tired sensoria,” Twaphu-anuph commented in snidely accented GalSix. “Only this time—equally noxious—he brings along two of his grubby Earthling masters. Have they come to take you home at last, like a truant child?”

Harry sensed Rety and Dwer stiffen. He hurried to respond with more firmness than he might have otherwise.

“Twaphu-anuph, you exceed your prerogatives, which do not include heaping personal abuse on a fellow acolyte of the Great Institutes. However, if you pass us through at once, I may refrain from lodging a formal protest.”

Perhaps it was fatigue from a long, successful mission that gave Harry's voice a more confident tenor. To his surprise, the big hoon seemed unmotivated to continue his traditional derisive taunting. Twaphu-anuph held out a giant hand.

“Hr-rr-r. Show me the humans' identification tags.
Please.
”

Harry shook his head.

“They are specimens claimed for observation by the Navigation Institute, entering Kazzkark under my own credentials. You may image both humans and do a bio scan before letting us through. That should take about thirty duras to accomplish. Regulations do not allow a longer delay. Or shall I complain to Wer'Q'quinn?”

Their eyes met. A low, rumbling sound fluttered from below Twaphu-anuph's chin as the throat sac drummed. Harry knew he was being roundly cursed in a semiprivate racial dialect. Formal insult could not be taken, since no official Galactic language was involved, but several onlookers seemed to grasp the cutting remark, expressing agreement or amusement in their own ways.
Ever since the debacle at the NuDawn Colony, centuries ago, malevolence from hoons had been a tedious fact of life to members of beleaguered Earthclan.

Dwer Koolhan abruptly burst out laughing, a sound that cut through Twaphu-anuph's hostile umble, causing it to trip and founder. The hoon gave up a surprised stare as the young human responded in Anglic—also an unofficial tongue, but one that many sophonts understood these days.

“Ouch, what a good cut! Hold on there a dura, while I explain to this poor chimp what you just said about his body type, his ancestors, and all that!”

Leaning toward Harry, Dwer offered a quick wink and whispered.

“Smile and pretend you're tellin' me something to say back at the fool.”

Harry blinked.

“What do you think you're trying to—”

Dwer stood up straight again, guffawing loudly and pointing at Harry. He made as if to say something to Twaphu-anuph, but was unable to get by gasps of laughter.

“He says … the chimp says …”

Rety wore a sour expression, rolling her eyes. But Harry could only stare in amazement as Dwer gathered a deep breath, looked straight at Twaphu-anuph … and began approximating a deep hoonish umble!

A kind of ferocity seemed to flash in Dwer's eyes as he threw a belchlike groan at the officious inspector, whose throat flapped with astonishment and dismay.

Abrupt silence reigned when Dwer took a breath and switched to Anglic.

“There, wasn't that clever? Where I come from, any chimp who said something like that would be called a real—”

Harry grabbed Dwer's arm and squeezed. The young man was wiry for a human, but no match for chim strength. Obediently, Dwer cut off at once, smiling amiably at the crowd. None had ever heard an Earthling umble before. It sure was a first for Harry!

Then, as if for good measure, Rety's little “husband”
stuck his little urrish head out from her pouch, giving the tall hoon a hiss of raspberry scorn, prompting still more surprised shouts from the throng.

“Enough!” Twaphu-anuph cried, slamming his heavy fist on a switch, causing the portal to fly open. “Hoontalking humans? Earth-talking hoons?
Has the whole cosmos gone crazy?
Get out of here! Go!”

While the bureaucrat buried his massive head in his hands, Harry kept his grip on Dwer's arm, pulling until all of them passed safely onto the covered avenues of Kazzkark, letting go only when the Ingress Atrium was far behind them.

Stepping back, he regarded the sooner boy, as if for the first time.

After a long pause, Harry grunted with a brief nod.

“I got just one question for you.”

“Yes?” Dwer replied.

“Can you teach me how to do what you did back there?”

There are ways of reporting an event that make it seem uneventful.

While waiting in Wer'Q'quinn's lobby for his boss to see him, Harry quickly modified his written account of meeting Dwer and Rety in E Space, removing his surmise that they came from a sooner world. It wasn't necessary to hide any actual facts. Who else but another Earthling would recognize Dwer's handsewn buckskins and neolithic weaponry for what they were?

He could rationalize that he wasn't really breaking his oath. Sort of.

“Your ship broke down and you lost all personal effects before the machine craft picked you up,” he coaxed the pair. “You also suffered brain damage, resulting in partial amnesia. That should qualify you for basic aid, under the Traveler's Assistance Tradition. Maybe enough to pay for air, water, and protein till you find a way to earn your keep. Got that?”

While Dwer nodded soberly, Rety murmured to the little male urs.

“You hear that, yee? Brain damage? I bet Dwer can fake
that
real good.”

Her “husband” responded by aiming a swift nip at her left hand, which she yanked back just in time. All at once, Harry decided he liked the small creature.

“I know some people in Low Town,” he said. “Maybe they can find the two of you some jobs you're suited for. Meanwhile, here's a data chip with standard information about Kazzkark and the surrounding sector,” he continued, handing over a clear rod, which Rety slid into her prize possession—a rather beat-up-looking tutorial computer of Terran design. “Study hard while I'm inside. When I finish, I'll take you someplace safe. But in return I'm gonna want your story—the
whole
story, you understand? About your home and everything.”

Both humans nodded, and Harry felt sure they meant it.

A musical chime seemed to fill the air—a unique rhythm and melody that Harry had been taught to recognize more surely than his own name.

A summons. Wer'Q'quinn's staff must have finished going through his data, taken by instruments that had peered at the Real Cosmos from the outside.

At last
, he thought, standing up. Already the two young humans were immersed in images from the teaching unit, so he left without a word. Hurrying toward his boss's office, Harry felt growing excitement. With this recent success, he had earned some consideration from the Navigation Institute. Perhaps enough to be let in on the big secret.

Maybe now someone will tell me what in Ifni's Probabilistic Purgatory is going on!

Several miduras passed before he emerged at last from Wer'Q'quinn's sanctuary, feeling rather dazed.

He had hoped for an explanation.

Now Harry wondered if it was such a good idea, after all.

Ain't it always like this? The gods warn us to be careful what we wish for. Sometimes it comes true.