Star Rigger's Way (19 page)

But his weariness vanished early the next morning when he was awakened by his phone. The caller was a rigger, but seemed afraid to give his name. "I overheard you asking around last night—and I don't mean you to think I was eavesdropping, but if I can help you I thought it would be better for me to call than just to keep quiet. So you don't mind, do you? If—"

"Please," Carlyle interrupted, shaking himself awake. "Do you know something?"

"Well, I heard you mention the name of a rigger you were trying to find, and since you said you'd been all over trying to locate her—"

Her!

"—I thought since I did know something about her—well, at first I wasn't going to say anything, since it's none of my business—but then I figured—"

"What do you know about her? Do you mean Janofer?"

"What?"

Carlyle shouted, "Janofer! Is her name Janofer?"

"Well, yes, of course. That's who you were asking about, wasn't it?" The man sounded hurt.

"Yes. Please—what do you know about her?" Carlyle was about to explode, talking to this little pictureless phone in his room.

"Well, I can't actually tell you anything about her myself." Carlyle's heart dropped. But the man added, "What you need to do is go downtown to a technics wholesale place, name of Gabriel Merck. M-e-r-c-k. Just ask for Merck's. They'll be able to tell you."

"What?" Carlyle asked anxiously. "Why?"

"They'll know. You just ask for Merck's. And then you go see Gabe himself. I've got to go now—"

"Wait! Can you tell me anything—?" But he was talking to a dead phone. He slammed the desktop and paced the room. He stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips and stared at a hole in the wall near the door where the composition panel was flaking apart. The hole had a crumbly edge, with partition space showing inside. Carlyle longed to grab the edge of that hole and rip out another chunk of paneling, and to rip and keep ripping until he had torn a hole large enough to climb through. He could feel the sensation in his fingertips: the strain of pulling against the compressed, grainy material—the sudden give, and the handful of dust and chunks of crumbled material spilling to the floor.

Instead of doing that, he went and got Cephean. Then he called the Guild service desk. "How do I get to Merck's?" he asked. "Gabriel Merck's—a technics place?" Three minutes later, he had his directions. He told Cephean to wait for him, and he went out looking for a cab.

The cab ride took thirty minutes. It was a human-operated aircar, and the driver had some difficulty in finding certain key streets in the wholesale district; but eventually he stopped at the correct address. "Please wait," Carlyle asked. As he stepped toward the building at Merck's address—there was no name sign—the cab pulled away with a swoosh.

Carlyle held his breath angrily, then exhaled and went into the building. He cautiously stepped around a seemingly built-in obstacle in the doorway, a tall mechanical device of uncertain function. A light on the device glowed as he passed. The dimly lit shop was crowded in front and seemed to extend for a considerable distance to the rear. Carlyle saw a movement among the vertical warehouse racks. He hesitated and then called out, "Mr. Merck? Gabe Merck?" There was no answer, but he saw a movement again in the rear, something shadowy moving back and forth across a darker shadow. "Mr. Merck!" he called.

His eyes were beginning to adapt to the gloom. The place barely had a storefront; crated and uncrated technics products were stacked high on both sides. The counter was unusually low, and open in the middle. A glow from one corner far to the rear suggested a work area. "Mr. Merck!" he called anxiously. He wondered if his "tip" had been a practical joke.

The storefront lights suddenly came up halfway. There was a hum and several clicks from the rear, and something came forward down one of the aisles. Carlyle stepped to the counter, feeling uneasy. The storekeeper emerged into the light. It, or he, was a cyborg. Riding in a hovering life-support system which boasted several manipulator arms was a Thangol, a humanoid with high, bony features and a mop of reddish brown hair around the back of its neck and over the back half of its skull. Or rather, it was the head and upper abdomen of a Thangol; the rest of his body was missing. He still possessed his right arm but only had a stump for his left.

"Gabriel Merck?" Carlyle asked.

"Yes," the Thangol answered in a gravelly whisper. Carlyle wondered if the whisper was a normal Thangoli tone. "Just one moment, if you please," said Merck. His cyborg body carried him humming around the end of an aisle.

Carlyle realized suddenly that Merck's voice had come from the mechanical unit, not from his lips.

Merck stopped near the end of a rack of shelves. He tilted his head back to look up, and his eyes searched the upper shelf. A leg suddenly telescoped from the bottom of his lower unit; Merck rose into the air on his hover unit, apparently balanced rather than supported by the leg. When he was at the level of the top shelf, he extended a mechanical arm and took a package in its grip. Then he descended, his leg retracting under him with a long sigh, and he hummed back around to where Carlyle was waiting. "Now then, may I help you?" he whispered. His mechanical arm held the package snugly against a shelf built into the front of his lower unit.

"Well, yes," said Carlyle. He hesitated. This was ridiculous. What would Janofer have had to do with a place like this? Unless . . . she had been injured somehow and—

Just because the shopkeeper's a cyborg doesn't mean his customers are!

"Yes," he said, trying to push the train of thought back into motion. "Have—you had a customer in here recently who was a rigger? A female human? Her name was Janofer Lief."

"A customer?" whispered the Thangol. "No, I do not recall a rigger being one of my customers."

Carlyle cleared his throat. "Well, perhaps not a customer, but here for some other reason."

The Thangol looked at him oddly.

"Perhaps you used the services of a rigger? Perhaps you own or lease a ship and arranged for riggers to fly it? Perhaps one or more of them visited here? Does any of this approach truth?" He was very tense, very nervous. Was he imagining a rise in hostility from the Thangol/cyborg?

"Yes," said the Thangol, "it is possible that I operate a ship for business reasons, and of course I would employ riggers such as yourself in flying the ship, if I had one. But the employment of riggers is customarily arranged by the RiggerGuild, is it not?"

"Customarily, yes," said Carlyle. "But there are exceptions. I don't mean to pry into your business practices at all—my only interest is in tracing a friend of mine, a rigger named Janofer Lief." Carefully he drew forth Janofer's holoprint and showed it to the Thangol. Merck studied it for a moment, holding it in his fleshy right hand. He returned it to Carlyle.

For a moment they exchanged stares. Then Carlyle prompted. "Do you recall seeing this woman?"

Merck rubbed the two thumbs of his right hand against the opposing three fingers. He studied the activity as though it belonged to the hand of another. "I can tell you that I might remember seeing someone who looked like her," he said finally.

Carlyle closed his eyes and took several slow breaths. He opened his eyes again. Normally he might be intimidated by the Thangol's appearance, by his cool reserve, by the fact that he could undoubtedly crush Carlyle with a single one of his mechanical hands. But Carlyle was tired of feeling intimidated. "Could you please be more specific?" he said quietly. "I am asking for my own personal information. Nevertheless, I am asking also as a good-standing member of the RiggerGuild. I had hoped that you would try to help me. As a member of the RiggerGuild."

The Thangol stared at him with both eyes wide and unblinking. Whether Merck interpreted Carlyle's statement as a threat or as formal protocol was not clear. But finally he whispered, "Yes, I think I can safely say that the female rigger you asked about was here."

"And did you engage her services? Or the services of Skan Sen, or Renwald Legroeder?" Carlyle showed the Thangol holoprints of the two men.

Merck waved his right hand. "No," he whispered hoarsely. "Neither of these two men."

"And the woman? Janofer Lief?"

The Thangol hesitated again. Carlyle lightly rubbed the rigger embroidering on his tunic, almost unconsciously. "Yes," said Merck at last. "I engaged her as a rigger on one of my ships."

"How long ago? Where were they bound?" Carlyle squinted, his anxieties multiplying.

"About two months ago."

"Local months?"

"Yes, local."

That was about a month and a half standard. "Where were they bound?" he said.

The Thangol stared at him for a long moment, then said, "Good day!" and turned to float back to the dark recesses of his shop.

"One minute!" Carlyle barked. He was astonished by his own tone of voice. The Thangol/cyborg turned slowly and looked at him. "I said, where were they bound?" He waited, glaring. How far an implied RiggerGuild threat would carry him here he didn't know. But he had nothing to lose.

The Thangol held his silence but moved half a meter closer. Carlyle slammed his hand upon the counter. "
Where were they bound?"
he demanded.

"Denison's Outpost," whispered the Thangol. He spun and hummed out of sight down the aisle.

The lights in the storefront dimmed. Clearly Carlyle was being invited to leave. He stood thinking for a moment, then went outside. The door clicked locked behind him, leaving him isolated on the deserted street.

It took him half an hour to get another aircab, but he had plenty of thinking to do while the time went by. Denison's Outpost, he thought, was somewhere in Golen space—but he wasn't sure exactly where. There was a Dennison's Hardship also, and a Denizen's Haven. And he couldn't remember which ones were located where. But he had a bad feeling.

* * *

When he returned and checked in the Guild navigational library, his fear was confirmed. Denison's Outpost was located deep in Golen space. That was why the Thangol had been so reluctant to talk. Whatever shipment he had been making to that planet—if he had told the truth—was at least partly illegal. Nearly
all
shipments into Golen space were partly or entirely illegal. Many of the planetary laws within that space were confused, contradictory, and repressive—and unevenly enforced. Illegal traffic proliferated: illicit drugs, high-energy weapons, psychoactive technics, slavery (both human and nonhuman), and "unsafeguarded" robots and organic computer cores—lacking certain restrictive programmings which would protect human operators. And with the illicit traffic went banditry, piracy, and other more uncertain dangers.

The nonreturn rate for ships entering Golen space was five times that in any other outworld section of space. It was for this reason that sixty standard years ago the RiggerGuild had called a broad strike, demanding protection in Golen space. It was the only Guild strike ever to have failed—not because the combined spacing authorities had not wanted to establish controls over Golen space, but because they had been unable to do so. In rescinding the strike, the Guild had declared Golen space a "protection-free" zone. Riggers flew there only at their own risk, by their own independent arrangements, and without benefit of the Guild's protective umbrella. Under no circumstances could a rigger be required, regardless of contract, to enter Golen space; and all riggers were strongly discouraged from doing so.

Yet some did. Always some did. Some for adventure, for escape, for reward; some for perverse reasons, to satisfy self-destructive urges; some for the feel of exploration, for bravado. The reasons were as varied as the individuals who went. Some were simple, some complex; some were good, some bad; some carried hopes of success, others carried none.

But why would
Janofer
have wanted to go? A rigger who could have chosen almost any crew, any ship, any destination—what attraction would those forbidding spaces have held for her? Had she felt that desperate, that despairing?

And what of Skan and Legroeder? Carlyle had information, however unreliable, tracing both men to Andros II. And Andros II was a natural jumping-off point for Golen space, though it was in and of itself a respectable enough port. But there seemed no way to be sure where they had gone. The Guild office advised Carlyle delicately that no records were maintained of riggers entering the protection-free zone. True, they could find no record of either man arriving at Andros II; but they had no record of Janofer's arrival, either, and Merck would hardly have admitted seeing her if she had not been on the planet. So the Guild's recordkeeping here was less than exemplary.

Perhaps all three were in Golen space.

"Cephean," Carlyle said, since he had decided for himself without even allowing debate, "will you fly with me in Golen space? It could be very dangerous."

"Sssssss," muttered Cephean. He flipped Odi into a somersault and stared at Carlyle with apparitional eyes. "H-all righ-ss."

"Good," said Carlyle. "We'll leave tonight. No cargo except light goods in case we have to barter."

Carlyle tried not to dwell on certain feelings of guilt about the ease with which he had persuaded Cephean. The cynthian almost certainly did not appreciate what it was he had agreed to. And neither, perhaps, did Carlyle.

* * *

The Wall of the Barrier Nebula loomed intimidatingly against one-half of the universe. As
Spillix
coasted out of the Andros system, Carlyle set his course as carefully as he could, considering how little he knew of this region. The Guild navigational references about Golen space had been sketchy. He decided to skim close to the plane of the Wall, or whatever its Flux equivalent would prove to be. Later they would turn outward to angle across to Denison's Outpost.

Golen space. Was he certain that he wanted to do this? He could be pursuing a phantom, a lie. But did he have any choice?

When he took
Spillix
down into the Flux, he decided to keep his navigational imagery similar to the actual normal-space view; this should render him less susceptible to surprise, to sudden change growing out of his own imagery. But it would slow their flight, since he could not use daring imagery to abridge their course or to speed them faster through the Flux. At present he just wanted the security provided by that huge, glowing nebula on his right.