Hellflower (v1.1) (8 page)

Valijon Starbringer was not TwiceBorn. The Starborn Corporation -the form his alMayne princely House takes in the Empire at large-does not choose that its alMayne subjects accept Imperial honors except when unavoidable. Kennor Starbringer is TwiceBorn. Amrath Starborn-their "king"-is not.

The alMayne do not like those who are not alMayne, no matter how high their estate.

I do not remember them from the days I was the Library at the University of Sikander. They are a new race, yet records speak of them as very old. I do not like paradoxes of this sort, and t do not like the alMayne. Irrationally xenophobic, reactionary, conservative, they prefer to stagnate in their elegant barbarism than to change and grow. Such a barbarian, trapped aboard
Firecat
, could be expected to do something dangerously irrational.

The alMayne, as a race, might be seen to be irrational. Butterfly says "hellflowers is crazy" and-feels no need for further explanation. I do. I have studied these elegant barbarians, hellflowers, "Gentle People." I could have translated Valijon’s speech for Butterfly. I did not choose to. It would not have made her jettison him, nor would she have understood even the translation.

"Hellflowers" do not have a modern psychology. Their entire culture is focused upon the willingness to die for intangibles such as personal honor.
"Dzain’domere"
means "I pledge and give my word."

Thus it is bound up in alMayne concepts of honor which are indeed "better than bread." An alMayne can live for quite some time without food: an alMayne who is doubted-disbelieved in-ceases to exist instantly.

Their suicide rate is high, as might be expected; it is the index of stress on a nearly pre-technological, highly ritualized culture attempting to fit itself into the Phoenix Empire.

The Azarine Coalition Council, of which Kennor Starbringer of AlMayne is president, decides policy matters for the Coalition at large. Its primary business is the ratification and modification of the terms of the Gordinar Canticles, the charter under which the Coalition operates. The Canticles cover, in broad, matters affecting the governance of hired armies, from the weapons they may carry, to the targets they may be used against, to the persons and organizations who may hire them. The key canticle is the matter of who may lawfully hire mercenary armies. As it currently stands, any sophont or entity may; the checks and balances arise from the Coalition defining the targets against which they may not be used, and the base price for a mercenary’s services.

To construct an example: Naturally it is illegal to hire a mercenary army to oppose any of the edicts of the Emperor, the Throne, the Court, or any of the TwiceBorn-the Imperial bureaucracy. However, it is certainly legal to hire mercenary troops to overthrow a Corporation-the ruling entity of a Directorate. But a Corporation so menaced can appeal to the sector governor for aid, who can provide the Corporation with Imperial troops, which the mercenaries cannot legally oppose. But for a Corporation to do this is to invite Imperial attention, and the causes of the original war will go into arbitration. It is not unheard of for a Corporation to appeal for help against rebellious forces and have all its assets turned over to the rebels. Imperial justice, as the folk-wisdom goes, is obscure.

One can see, therefore, that, for example, a modification of the Canticles to forbid Azarine troops to fight Corporation troops would be very much to the Corporations’ benefit. One can further see that there could be a great deal of special interest group pressure on the Coalition Council to make partisan changes to the Gordinar Canticles.

At the moment the Coalition Council is evenly divided between those who wish to make major changes to the Canticles, including the List of Protected Groups, and those who wish to leave the Canticles as they are. Kennor Starbringer, as president, could cast a deciding vote either way. At the moment he is a strict Constructionist, and will not vote for change.

Should he die or resign, his Council membership will go to the alMayne Morido Dragonflame, who favors complete revision of the Canticles.

Seen in this light, Valijon Starbringer is a playing piece in a very high-stakes game indeed. Butterfly’s safety depends on staying far from the attention such matters bring, and she knows it. It is fortunate that Valijon Starbringer’s appearance on Wanderweb was an accident, and that no one knows where he is now.

I wonder.

Considering the money lost in the action, why would Wanderweb shut down its entire Port to prevent the escape of two relatively unimportant criminals?

I was dreaming and I knew it, and part of me thought I ought to wake up and keep an eyeball on Tiggy, but I’d finished the second box of burntwine a while back because my backteeth and all of my bruises hurt and Tiggy could do me any time he got around his honor anyway.

So I watched myself sleep, the way you do in dreams. I was back home on Granola, running off early in the morning to play hooky. The light was slanting rose-gold and silver through the trees and there was cooking-breakfast smoke rising off the housetops in the valley below.

Nice place, Granola. I’d been this way before, in dreams.

And just like the other times, this starship came sailing through the treetops to land in my da’s cornfield-a bolt of platinum godfire looking like nothing I’d ever seen.

The scene jumped, like slicing the middle out of a talkingbook, and then I was looking at the first planet I’d ever seen from space. Home. But not home anymore-I was leaving and I wasn’t ever coming back.

You’re thick when you’re kinchin-bai; fifty fellow-citizens on ice in his hold and I never stopped to think what the captain’s being a slaver meant to me. Didn’t even know the word.

I wanted to wake up before I got to the part where I
did
know, but all that happened was I jumped about three years, to Pandora.

At least I missed Market Garden. Those dreams are bad ones.

Pandora is a planet in the never-never, where the Hamati Confederacy bumps up against the Empire. I was downfall stranded without a numbercruncher or hope of one, with people after me because I’d run away from Market Garden and people soon to be after me wanting payoff for their kick, their goforth, and the numbercruncher that was slagged plastic and broken dreams in my cockpit.

Real poetic. Real dumb. So what’s so bad about being contract warmgoods, anyway? On Market Garden I was a marketable commodity-for use, when finished, somewhere tronics wouldn’t do. No reason for them to waste time telling me things I’d never need to know-like what a Library was, and not to go buy one if I got the chance.

I dreamed I was back in the shop on Pandora, holding a box of broken glass that someone swore was a navicomp, and then it started to change. . . .

"Butterfly? Butterfly, wake up."

I staggered up out of dreams and heard someone else breathing inboard
Firecat.

"Butterfly? We need to talk." My teeth crawled. Paladin. He didn’t breathe but he talked real good. Tiggy Stardust was the one breathing. I nodded. Paladin’d see that. I put my hands over my face, trying to lock up the ghosts again. I don’t dream mostly. No percentage in it.

My head was slugging along with my heartbeat but I didn’t bump the burn on my arm and nothing else hurt too much. I looked over to where I’d stowed Tiggy in my second-best sleepsling. He looked soft and sweet and anyone that took a step toward him was taking her life in hand. So I crawled out of my rack the other way, past the cockpit well and up into the nose.

It was ungodly quiet in
Firecat.
The air scrubbers and everything else that used up power and oxy were off. I was starting us as we’d have to go on, with life-support down near marginal. Angeltown shed weird gray light through the hullports and I wrapped my quilt tighter around me and shivered. Later it was going to be as too hot as it was too cold now, and sometime after that we’d be to Kiffit or dead.

"Can you hear me?"

Damnfool question. "Je, che-bai, I hear." Granola was still ringing xylophone ghosts down all the years between me and fourteen. It was crazy to even think about going back. Even if I could find the place, I couldn’t land. Our Fifty Patriarchs had spun good plastic for them and their descendants to be left lonealone for ever and ever, world without end.

"You should have let Valijon Starbringer put himself out the airlock. You can still do it," Paladin started up, and went into a taradiddle all about xenophobic alMayne, heat-death of the Universe, and how Tiggy was son of Very Important TwiceBorn, all which I knew. Already knew he was trouble, and now Pally wanted to tell me about cultural fragmentation through linguistic evolution, whatever t’hell that was. Nothing I could see mattered, but he thought it was important, so I listened.

The song and dance kept coming back to "lose the glitterborn." Paladin was full with mights and maybes tonight and I was tired of my life. It was no time to be arguing ethics.

"Not going to frag the kinchin-bai just because it’s convenient," I snapped at him finally. Tiggy stirred but didn’t wake up, and I waited until he settled again. "Be reasonable. Think you Tiggy — che-bai’s da’s not going to want to know where’s his lost son-an-heir? For sure
Firecat
went up out of quarantine on Wanderweb and someone saw me stuff ‘I’iggy inboard. If I dock wonderchild alive and well at Azarine Guildhouse on Kiffit we have no problems. Mercs’re honest." And a hellflower merc wouldn’t turn around and sell Tiggy to someone else instead of handing him back to his original owner.

Paladin didn’t say anything.

"Bai, I got to be able to point to live Tiggy Stardust when hellflower trouble comes calling. It’s not like beating kidnap-rap. Hellflowers won’t stop."

"He is a liability." Did Paladin think he was going to change my mind, or did Libraries get tired too? We both knew all the sides of all I he arguments and we could go roundaround them forever.

Ice kinchin-bai-not because he was dangerous, but because he might be.

Not good enough.

"He’s kinchin-bai, Pally-a fourteen-year-old kid. This is his first I i me out. He’ll clear me a rap, and he won’t have anything else to tell anyone that’ll make any sense at all."

"You’re guessing, Butterfly. I’m not."

We both knew I knew I was guessing, and we both knew the percentages in my being right. Low. But there wasn’t any other thing to do Nut wake Tiggy up and shove him out the air lock-and then follow him myself.

"Once we get to Kiffit I’ll toss my kick and drop Tiggy-bai at Azarine Guildhouse. We’ll be gone before the heat drops, Pally. We’ll leg it straight back to Coldwater without waiting for a load. And we can find a hat trick to do in the Outfar for bye-n-bye until the heat dies down. Won’t cost us anything."

"Except a Free Port. Except air, and water, and food, and power to Kiffit. Except, if you are not lucky, your life."

I knew all that and I wasn’t happy about any of it.

"Is my life, bai-isn’t it?" But it wasn’t. It was Paladin’s too, and he was too polite to say, but he couldn’t make it in the Outfar-or anywhere-alone.

And neither could I. How many years ago would I of been dead without Paladin to cover up for everything a Interdicted Barbarian didn’t know?

"It was bad luck. It just happened. But we’ll ace this and get straight, you’ll see. Drop Tiggy-bai and have the good numbers again." I tried to tell myself I was trying so hard to keep Tiggy alive only because I knew his hellflower kin wouldn’t let the matter drop.

"Leaving aside his oxygen requirements, Valijon Starbringer is an outsider. He is an aristocrat—" Paladin listed all Tiggy’s shortcomings again. The only thing he didn’t do was ask me to put Tiggy out the lock to make him safe.

I don’t know what I would of done if he had.

Killing Tiggy was the smart thing. I knew it was. Raise my chances of getting to Kiffit alive. Lower the chances of anybody being able to cry Librarian. I was going to have to run for the edge of the Outfar either way, so keeping him alive wouldn’t get me anything.

And I couldn’t do it any more than I could Transit to angeltown without a ship. I didn’t know why. I didn’t like not knowing why.

I sat and stared out at angeltown and wondered what it would be like to just open the lock and step out. It wasn’t like realspace. Paladin tried to explain it to me once-something to do with time and relative dimensions in space-but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t need to understand it to fly through it, anyway.

"What about documentation?" Paladin said after awhiles, and I knew I’d won whatever I’d been fighting for. "Your pet cutthroat hasn’t got any ID on him."

If Paladin was thinking about that, he wasn’t thinking about making me put Tiggy out the air lock.

"Think there’s still couple sets of blank around somewheres. You do something to get him off=Port for me, bai?" ID wasn’t all Tiggy didn’t have. Wanderweb had stripped him to the skin. I’d have to see what
Firecat
could do for him in the way of clothes.

"Counterfeiting ID is not the problem, Butterfly."

No, problem was lots of other things, but none of them was hauling any cubic tonight. I sat under
Firecat’s
hullports and watched Tiggy breathe until I fell asleep.

It was my fault that Butterfly broke into the Wanderweb Justiciary to steal Valijon Starbringer. And from the moment that she made the choice to do so, it was inevitable that she would not abandon him.

I say that now, with hindsight. One may always desire facts to be other than they are. But the facts touching on this matter unfolded in inevitable progression over a span of years.

From the time Butterfly and I met on Pandora the problem of reliable communication has been a concern. Unless Butterfly and I could share information while she was away from
Firecat
, we were extremely vulnerable. Clandestine communication would markedly increase our joint chances to "live to get older."

I had originally thought that arranging this communication would be a simple matter, but the equipment I described to Butterfly did not exist. She attempted to construct some components, but even the tools did not exist-an entire technology had been destroyed in the unreasoning backlash against fully-volitional logics. At Butterfly’s urging we began to search for something available in the modern world that would meet our needs.