Hellflower (v1.1) (9 page)

When we finally determined the existence of the RTS unit, Butterfly had a number of reasons we could not acquire it, but as the Library at University I had incorporated several important studies on human behavior, and retained enough of that information not to find her actions inconsistent.

The implant operation would be a source of emotional trauma to any organic of the galactic culture. For a Luddite Saint from Granola, worn to pastoral simplicity and no technology more complex than the lilt-board plow and the waterwheel, it would be an even greater one. Butterfly is not as indifferent to the mores of either her natal culture or her adoptive culture as she pretends.

So we delayed. Eventually we came to Wanderweb-having carried the RTS unit with us for over a year-and the surgery was accomplished. Emotional backlash and suppressed cultural bias did the rest. A course of action undertaken in mutual willingness to provide greater safety to us both-the transponder implantation-leads inevitably to an action of great risk to us both-the jailbreak of the alMayne. If Butterfly considered her reasons for insisting on that course of action at all, she might have articulated them as being "to prove that she still had it." In reality, it was to prove that she still was it.

By the very nature of what I was, Butterfly was cut off from even the society of criminals and outlaws. An escaped slave, even an illegal emigrant, can find peers and socialization in the nightworld society.

The possessor of a fully-volitional logic, a Librarian, is outcast by every thinking being. There is no one in the Imperium so depraved as to knowingly offer a Librarian sanctuary, and no one who would keep such a thing secret.

On the fringe of the Phoenix Empire, away from the deadly cataloging bureaucracy, the two of us were safe. But what at first had seemed limitless freedom I discovered to be circumscribed indeed. We could go no closer to the center of the Empire than the very fringes of the Directorates. Any thorough medical examination would reveal what Butterfly was, and any cursory technical inspection would uncover me. The penalty for either discovery was death.

It was a death only slightly more certain than that which was the consequence of Butterfly’s chosen profession-but illegal pilot was, in all fairness, one of the few ways of acquiring credit she could espouse.

Piloting is a marketable skill-and she had been trained, if not certified, by Market Garden as part of her processing. A trained pilot willing to take considerable risks to maintain his freedom quickly becomes a darktrader.

If he has the money to purchase a ship-or can find a sponsor. The Pandora business venture on which Butterfly discovered me was an undertaking of the sort in which the probability of failure was so great that it precluded the use of expensive material. If Butterflies-are-free, an untried, potentially valueless commodity, got her ship, herself, and her cargo back to Coldwater, she would enjoy Factor Oob’s financial support and political backing, and live in comparative safety and comfort. If not, she would die.

She lived, with my help. And by her aid I returned to life. Butterfly protected me during the long period of reconstruction when I would ignorantly have revealed myself, and in return I provided her with the technological edge that meant success in a highly competitive profession. By the time we knew the truth about ourselves and each other, and had discovered what a "Library" was in this brave new world of bright promise, I did not wish to exchange my safety and companionship for new uncertainty, and Butterfly did not wish to relinquish my considerable resources. So we remained sequestered, secretly fugitive, and Butterfly remained distanced twice-over from her own kind.

But humans are social animals-every book I ever was tells of this. They are born and grow and die in social groups, responding to one another, and even if modern social groups include sentient females they are no less social groups for that. Configuration prefigures destiny. Structure determines function. An organic sentient needs to be with others of his own kind. In befriending me, Butterfly was deprived of the socialization the imperatives of her construction had shaped her to require.

If she had not been so alone, would she have clung to Valijon Starbringer-a dangerous nuisance-in the way she did?

No. But she was, and so she did. And I realized I could delay no longer.

For both our sakes, I must set her free.

###

It was eight days to Kiffit, and there was nothing to do but forge a ticket-of-leave for the rokeach and watch the life-support reserves drop against present usage. My shirts fit Tiggy, my pants didn’t, and I gave him the Estel-Shadowmaker handcannon for his very own because he seemed to like it. I gave up any hope of disarming him at a very early stage in our relationship.

Tiggy paced and fidgeted until I pointed out it’d use up the air faster, then he lay in his sleepsling and stared at nothing for hours with no expression at all.

He didn’t ask me any questions. Maybe good little hellflowers don’t. Maybe he thought a
chaudatu
didn’t know anything he needed. I didn’t ask him any questions neither. I was saving up my calls on his honor for when I needed them, and I didn’t want to give him any excuses to declare accounts closed.

So nobody talked. Including Paladin.

After that first night I’d wake up sometimes and see Tiggy watching me, like he was trying to stare through my skull. I spent lots of time in the mercy seat with the canopy popped, staring into angeltown till my eyes hurt, but there was no point in making Tiggy wonder who I was talking to.

The temperature rose, the air got thicker, and I sat in the dark thinking I was damned if I was going to die and give Pally the chance to say he told me so. And the sooner I lost Love’s Young Dream and stopped thinking about the perils of childhood, the better. Then me and Paladin could go back to doing business, like always.

The sooner the better.

###

Firecat
made Transit to realspace right on sked. Realspace was black sharp and dangerous with Kiffit lost in the skirts of the primary. I’d had a headache for the last two days that I couldn’t shake and when I moved too fast everything went gray. I knew my reflexes was too far gone for me to be able to get
Firecat
down. Fortunately I didn’t have to.

We crossed the Kiffit-Port beam and I flooded my Best Girl with the last of the reserve oxy and turned the airscrubbers up full. If Paladin couldn’t get us down within the hour we’d be dead, but for the chance to breathe real air again I didn’t care. Even Tiggy looked giddy with it. I slid into the mercy seat and played "let’s pretend." We rode Kiffit-Port’s beam into an approach pattern as Independent Freighter this-that-and-the-other-thing, Coldwater registry and last downfall Orilineesy, shipping x-meters cubic and crew of one, nine plates of goforth and all the other nosy nonsense slugs want to know about a honest woman making a moral living. Finally they gave me a landing window, about the time I could count our breathing in minutes.

I popped the hatch and cut the hull-fields before we was safely down. Sweet, free, and unmetered air blasted into
Firecat
with a whistle that set my teeth on edge. Paladin switched from para-light to para-gravity systems and coaxed my sweetheart to dance on her attitude jets, taking her down slow enough to keep her from getting her blessed little non-powered permeable hull shredded by atmosphere. Being alive was wonderful. Kiffit was wonderful. Air was wonderful. And I wanted a bath.

###

Kiffit wasn’t a Free Port, more’s the pity, but it was in the Outfar. It was shabby and overlooked and second rate, and the sort of place I know better’n my own name. Pally says the Empire’s dying by meters, and places like Kiffit are a point in his favor.

Eventually I was gig-in-dock, with Kiffit-Port looking like every Port on every Outfar planet in the never-never. I dogged the inner and outer hatches open and put down the ramp and went back into the hold. Paladin had the blowers going full tilt boogie. Tiggy’d climbed down out of his sling and was looking at me.

"Scenic Kiffit, hellflower. Just let me hook
Firecat
up and we’ll do some eyeballing." As soon as Paladin had a landline, he could tell me all about the Guildhouse on Kiffit and some of us could go there.

The docking rings on Kiffit are open to the sky. The sky was bright opaque orange and the air was thin and dry. I like canned air better as a rule-you know what you’re getting-but even what Kiffit was using for air tasted delicious. I went around to the docking ring firewall and found the Port Services hookups and dragged the hoses over to
Firecat
. Water and waste and power to run them when your goforths are cold, landline and computer access, all the comforts of sweet bye-m-bye. It took awhiles to get them hooked up right but I didn’t care as long as I was here to do it.

Then I went back inside
Firecat
. Tiggy Stardust had his Estel-Shadowmaker handcannon out and was pointing it right at me.

It wasn’t Paladin’s fault for not warning me. We both knew Tiggy was armed; we’d both been counting on hellflower honor to protect me. I hadn’t even seen Tiggy move before the blaster was out; he was that fast.

"I am leaving now, Captain San’Cyr."

So much for hellflower honor. Tiggy had his blaster pointed right at my chest, not that a near-miss would matter with an Estel-Shadowmaker. I kept my hands well away from anywhere that might have held heat and didn’t.

"So?"

"I wished to say farewell. I have been thinking, and I know now what I must do." He got up and walked past me to the hatch and down.

"Hellflower. Why the heat?" It was stupid but I wanted to know. Tiggy looked down at the blaster, then in through the hatch at me.

"I do not trust you, chaudatu. You do not understand honor. And you are not very smart."

Tiggy Stardust seemed to spend his whole time walking out of my life. I hoped this time it was for good.

I sat down on the crate he’d been sitting on. After a while it got cold, so I got my jacket and my blasters and a few other odds and ends from my lockboxes and tucked them all away nice and proper. Paladin was real quiet.

"So why don’t you say you told me so?" I said. No comment. Paladin can shut up better than anybody I know, and you can’t see his face while he’s doing it.

"What do you think’s going to happen to him, bai?" That he answered.

"Based on Valijon’s performance on Wanderweb, he will immediately be arrested for causing a public disturbance-only in Borderline they will insist on identifying him before sentencing. Since he has no ID on him, they—"

I put up my hand and Paladin stopped talking. Something was nagging hard at the back of my mind, but it wouldn’t come in and I let it go. "Never mind. So they’ll ID him and shop’m back to his da? That’ll do me fine."

And good-bye to the recent and unlamented Tiggy, social work on the brain-dead, and all my other wastes of time and money. After awhiles I went on with my business. Gentry don’t get paid to think.

###

There’s a nice system on Kiffit and most Imperial Outfar ports whereby you never have to meet the person catching your kick. It works whether you’re pre-contracted or no, and whether you have any actual interest in selling your cargo or not.

I had no interest in my supposed money-load, but every interest in making the Teasers think I did, so I took the rokeach off to a nice tradelocker and fed my manifest through the doorlock.

If I came back for the cargo, I’d only be down the locker rent. If my assignee did, he’d have to pay serious valuta on top of the rent. In this case, I didn’t have a buyer for my rokeach, so Paladin listed my cargo and price asking on Tradehall board whiles I danced it.

Teasers keep track of things like that, the nosy baskets. I was damned if I was going to be charged pleasure-yacht rates for coming in to Kiffit without a cargo. I was going to lose enough money on this tik already.

So I was asking twenty percent over Market Garden setprice on the board, and I’d come back when I was ready to lift and either pick up my payoff or take the lock down to the Transport Workers Guildhall and sell it to someone who wanted to speculate in rokeach futures. Fine and nice and real friendly. And
Firecat
and me was documented every step of the way as coming to Kiffit to do serious bidness, in case anybody came for to ask. And while this was all real uplifting, it wasn’t how I paid the rent.

After a sprightly pre-meridies of healthy exercise and a detour through an off-Port bathhouse, I went back to
Firecat
to get the moneyload.

And Dominich Fenrir was waiting.

###

Dominich Fenrir is the chief Teaser on Kiffit. Being Trade Customs and Commerce’s man on Kiffit has to be a thankless job, but Dommie don’t worry his pretty head over justice and mercy and Customs regs. He went bent a long time ago.

If you’re a Directorate merchantman up to paying the vigorish, you can run anything you want in and out of Kiffit-Port unwept unhonored and unsung. The rest of us just pay the occasional sweetener not to be certified Unfit to Lift by Kiffit Port Authority. Only sometimes Dom mie’s got to pretend he’s still a honorable Imperial, and that’s when independents like me get happy days and busy nights.

"Hello, St. Cyr. Nice to see you back. How’s the wrong side of the law these days?"

"Wouldn’t know. Am honest woman, forbye. Business must be had, you bothering me."

Dommie smole a small smile and managed to look even more unattractive. "Oh, no. I’d say this comes under the heading of protecting my interests, St. Cyr. Now why don’t you open up your ship so we can go inside-since we’re such old friends."

"Siblings, surely; you choose your friends," Paladin commented.

I opened up
Firecat
and Dommie swung himself in, not waiting for the ramp to come down. I pulled in after him.

"Nice cargo you got here, Gentrymort," Dommie said, looking around all
Firecat’s
empty hold still rigged for two.

"Just tossed kick, Dommie-bai. Here’s locker compkey for it, see?" A Gentrymort is what I am, but I don’t like being called that by bought law.