The Dragon Variation (80 page)

Excellent question. And he was very sure that the answer was—
Aelliana
had not. Daav took a deep breath and ran the Scout's Rainbow quickly, bringing both terror and fury down to manageable levels.

"We will be certain to ask her that," he said to Sinit Caylon's frantic face, "when we find her. Have you looked anywhere else? Her rooms?"

"No, sir."

"Do so," he instructed her. "I will see what else may be found here. Quickly. If she has indeed been in the sleep learner for so long a time, she will be—disoriented."

Brain-burned
, he amended to himself as Sinit ran from the room. He swallowed against resurgence of terror and began methodically to search the room.

He lingered for a moment by an overturned gidget table, frowning at the trinkets scattered across the rug, then passed on, satisfying himself that delirium had not moved Aelliana to shelter beneath the furniture.

Eventually, he came to the end of the room. There was a comm on the floor beneath the closed window. He bent to pick the unit up and felt a cool breeze kiss his cheek. Straightening, he moved to the window, put his hand flat on the tall center pane and pushed.

The window swung open, soundless on well-oiled hinges. Daav leaned over the sill, a Scout's trained eye picking out the route she had taken through the meager garden, the marks at one consistent height along the length of the worn wooden fence, where she had likely set her shoulder, for balance, and for orientation. The gate at the bottom of the yard stood open, rocking slightly in the night-breeze.

"PIRATE!" NADELM MIZEL shrieked,
his face flushed and twisted in rage. "I will see you ruined, outcast and ridiculed! I will—"

Rapid footsteps sounded in the hallway and the halfling flashed by, raced across the foyer without a sideward glance and flung up the stairway, two steps at a time.

"Sinit!" howled the nadelm, but Sinit did not answer.

"Voni!" the nadelm shouted then. "Call the Peacekeepers."

But Voni was sitting on the lower step, head resting on her knees.

Furious, he raised a ring-crusted hand, as if he would strike her. Samiv called his attention to the gun, and he froze, rings glittering—tawdry things for the most part, she saw, all sharp edges and shine.

Except for one. And how had such a tasteless dirt-stomper as Nadelm Mizel come by a Jump-pilot's cluster? she wondered. Such things were priceless—clan treasures, to be locked safe away and brought forth once a twelve-year to marvel upon.

"Samiv." Korval's voice was in her ear. "I have found her trail. She does not appear—well," he said, and she felt a thrill of horror run her spine. "We must overtake her before she comes to more harm."

"Yes," she said. "Go you first while I keep this one—"

The front door clanked and swung ponderously open. A round-faced woman in a travel cloak stepped into the foyer—and froze, as she took in the scene before her.

She swept forward then, raising her hand, so that the Clan Ring was plain to see.

"I have the honor," she said icily, fixing Samiv in her eye, "to be Mizel. You will explain yourselves."

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO talk;
words she did not mean to say fell in abundance from her lips while words she desperately wished to say failed to form themselves.

Still, she had made the taxi driver understand—at least, he drove her to the Pilot's Guildhall in Chonselta Port. She did not think she had precisely asked him to do so, but it was—enough.

"The orbit of the retrograde planet will develop a wobble in approximately ten thousand years," she told him as she fumbled the cantra-piece out of her pocket, "and will fail entirely in eleven thousand."

"Then it's nothing either of us need be concerned of," he replied, pressing the coin firmly back into her palm, and bending her fingers over it, one by one. "Plot a straight course for the dorm, now, Pilot. Time to sleep it off."

"If you are outside a major gravity well you may ignore the pel'Endra Ratio and proceed," Aelliana said gratefully, fingers locked around the cantra.

"I fully intend to proceed, and as quickly as may be," he said. "Hull's cool, Pilot. Out you go."

She managed to disembark and stood trembling on the walkway. The taxi's door began to descend and she said, "Don't tell him you saw me."

The door sealed and the taxi moved slowly away.

Aelliana turned carefully, there being nothing to hold onto here on the walk. She focussed on the doorway, ignoring the random flashes and flarings that had nothing to do with the street before her. Focus established, she moved forward, sliding her feet along the sidewalk, to maintain what balance she might.

She only fell twice before she gained the door.

Duty is not indulgent, nor does it seek vengence.

—Proverb
 

"SHE'S NOT HERE, sir!"
Sinit's voice came down from the upper floor, closely followed by Sinit herself.

"Mother?" She reached the foyer and made her bow. "Good evening, ma'am. Ran Eld had said you were not expected until tomorrow."

"Well I came tonight," Mizel said coldly. "Are you in a league, Sinit, with pirates who come armed into a clanhouse?"

"Pirates?" Sinit frowned. "Truly, ma'am, Delm Korval and Pilot tel'Izak have called for Aelliana, but she is—she is not to House."

"Learning so, they hold the nadelm at gunpoint. Entirely understandable." Mizel extended her hand. "You will relinquish that weapon to me."

"Forgive me," Samiv said firmly, "but I will not. This person shoved me and then threatened to strike me. I fear for my safety in his presence. More, I fear for Pilot Caylon's safety." She looked up, and Daav saw fury in her eyes. "Did the Caylon wear a Jump-pilot's ring?"

"Yes."

Nadelm Mizel took a step back, hand creeping toward his pocket.

"Show it!" Samiv cried. "Show your delm what you wear on your hand!"

"I do not take orders from you!" snarled the nadelm.

"But you do take orders from me," Mizel said, and extended her hand once more. "Let me see this ring, Ran Eld."

Reluctantly, he pulled the cluster from his hand, and laid it in her palm.

"It is a foolishness, ma'am—a bit of paste. I—"

Mizel stared at her palm. "How came you by this?"

The nadelm stood speechless.

"Ran Eld! I ask how you came to have this ring. An answer, if you please."

"It was Aelliana's," the elder sister moaned from her crouch on the bottom stair. She looked up, showing a wet and ravaged face. "He took it off her hand. I saw him. Just before he sealed the lid on the Learner."

IT WAS A SLOW NIGHT
at Chonselta Guildhall. Rab Orn and Nil Ten were playing pikit in the common room and Keyn was over in the corner, reading. Beside the occasional hand-bid from the card players, the only noise came from the port comm, a continuous babble so familiar to the three pilots that none consciously heard it.

Nil Ten sighed. "Fold," he muttered, throwing his cards down in a heap. "Glad we're not playing this for cantra."

"We're not?" asked his partner, wide-eyed and the first pilot laughed, looked up and gasped.

Her face was a mottle of cuts and bruises, so swollen the pupil-big eyes could scarcely open. Her hair was snarled in a hopeless knot. She was trembling, visibly and continuously.

"What—" Rab Orn turned in his chair to see, and froze.

"Daav's the card I want to play," the apparition stated, her voice like sand being ground into stone.

"Merciful gods," that was Keyn. She got up out of her chair and came forward, peering into the newcomer's battered face.

"It's the Caylon," she breathed. "I saw her last evening, at Solcintra, when the Guildmaster gave over her license. Sitting on Korval's lap she was and happy as you please."

"It is the duty of the pilot to protect ship and passengers," Aelliana Caylon said gravely. "It is the duty of the copilot to protect pilot and ship."

The three exchanged glances, then Keyn reached out and touched the other woman's shoulder. "That's right, pilot. Guild rule, plain as plain." She took a deep breath. "Come along with me, and let's get you to a 'doc, eh? Everything's going to be
binjali . . .
"

"
Binjali
." The slitted black eyes locked onto Keyn's face, one trembling hand rose, fumbled and fastened 'round the pilot's wrist.

"Jon dea'Cort." Keyn stared and the Caylon said again, voice rising. "Jon dea'Cort. The retrograde planet will release a hysteresis energy effect proportional to the velocity and spin of Smuggler's Ace, cheese muffins, Daav, efficient function! Call, call if you need me, Aelliana!"

"That's plain." Nil Ten jumped up, oversetting his chair, walked over to the comm and punched in a rapid code. The screen blanked as the unit on the other end chimed, three times, four, five . . .

"Binjali's."

Nil Ten inclined his head to the old pilot in the viewer. "Master dea'Cort. Nil Ten pel'Quida, Chonselta Guildhall, sir. We have one of your crew here, in distress."

MIZEL RAISED HER HEAD,
lines showing hard about her mouth and she looked to her son.

"Aelliana's father," she said, speaking in the mode of Instruction, "wore one of these. Other than himself, it was his clan's whole treasure. This ring will ransom a Jump-ship, will it not, Korval?"

"Indeed," Daav said gravely, "that was the purpose behind its making. Ma'am, I beg your pardon. The timer and intensity meter on the Learning Module are frozen at such levels as must cause me extreme alarm. I have found the course Aelliana charted, out the window and through the back gate. She—she is very likely brain-burned, ma'am, and I fear for her life if we do not go after her at once."

"Yes." Mizel looked up at him. "I am correct in thinking that your personal name is Daav?"

"It is."

"So." She held out the Pilot's Cluster. "You will safeguard this and return it to my daughter when you find her. I will do—what is discovered to be necessary—here. Pray inform me of—your progress. Should she return here—" Her mouth tightened. "But you will know where she is most likely to go."

Daav inclined his head, slipping the ring into the inner pocket of his cloak. "If she should return here, ma'am, leave word with Master dea'Cort at Binjali Repair Shop, Solcintra Port." He glanced over to Samiv, who slipped her gun away.

"Will you help me search?"

"I demand the honor," she replied, and followed him down the hallway.

HE TRACKED HER DOWN the alley,
following the path her shoulder had smoothed against splintered fencing. He found the places where she had fallen, the places where she had crawled until she found a fence post, an arbor or a tree to cling to and drag herself up to her feet.

The alley was intersected by a street; on the other side there was no sign of her passage. He and Samiv recrossed the street, she went right and he to the left, looking for a hint, a footprint, a thread.

A thread.

A snag of bold blue, caught in the rust of a sign pole. He cast out, moving in a gradually widening circle around that whisper of hope, but found nothing else. Defeated, he returned to the pole.

Had the Peacekeepers seen her, ill-balanced as she was, and born her away to their Guildhall? But, surely, she would told them her name, her clan?

Or, he thought with a shiver, perhaps not. Brain-burned, she might not recall such things.

Where would she go, if she were able to recall herself?

Binjali's, no doubt.

But in such a condition as he had seen, falling flat when there was no wall to support her? She might, he supposed, flag a taxi, but Aelliana rarely had more than a few dex in her pocket . . .

The hum of a motor brought him to a sense of his surroundings and he turned to see a cab moving slowly up the street. Apparently the cabbie noted his interest, for the vehicle pulled to the curb and the passenger door rose.

"Service, your Lordship?"

"Information," he said, bending down to look at the driver. He pulled a cantra out of his pocket. "I am in search of a friend—a fair-haired lady, very slender. Green eyes. She would have perhaps been confused in her direction and—unsteady on her feet—" The cabbie stiffened, but said nothing. After a moment, Daav murmured.

"You have seen her."

The man moved his shoulders, leaned forward to make an adjustment on his board. "I saw her," he said, and the look he gave Daav was hard and straight. "Took her up-city. Set her down at Commerce Square."

Commerce Square? The opposite direction of the Port. Daav frowned, considering the man's face, almost tasting the lie. And yet . . .

"You must forgive me if I ask again," he murmured, hearing Samiv coming down the walkway from his right. "I am the lady's copilot and I fear she is—very ill. Perhaps she was not—precisely as I had said. Perhaps she had been hurt, eh? And you think you are looking at the cause. I beg you tell me if you took her to Port. I tell you plainly that I fear for her life, should she board ferry for Solcintra."

The cabbie hesitated, then. "I'll see your hands."

Wondering, Daav held them out. Korval's Ring gleamed in the cabin light. The cabbie stared a long moment, then raised his eyes.

"That wouldn't have done the damage I saw. You want stones for that kind of work." He sighed and looked away. "I took her down to the Pilot's Guild, and I'll tell you right now she wasn't making no sense."

* * *

MIZEL LOOKED AT THE deeds
of transfers in her hands. Two deeds of transfers, each from Aelliana Caylon to Ran Eld Caylon: one for an Ormit Shares account, one for a spaceship named
Ride the Luck
. Both were signed.

Neither signature was Aelliana's.

"Voni has already confessed to signing these in her sister's stead," Mizel said, her eyes still on those damning papers. "I have seen, I think, enough. While it is possible that your sister Aelliana has survived your use of her—while it is possible, though not probable, that she has survived
intact
—the delm cannot but see that your actions are consistent with a deliberate and knowing desire to take what was not rightfully yours, counting no cost too high. Not even your sister's death."