The Duke Of Uranium (32 page)

“Now, before you insult or hurt your friend—and thereby make an extraordinarily deadly enemy of him—

I suggest that you spend some time studying up on Rubahy customs.”

With as much contrition as he could manage—which was always very little—Jak nodded his head and said, “All right. I’ll look it up, and”—the same young woman went by in the other direction, looking vaguely puzzled; Jak wondered whether she might be lost, or stood up by someone, or wearing anything under that thin shift, and need his help—”well, anyway, I’ll do that.”

“Of course you will,” Gweshira said, in a tone that indicated that she didn’t believe it but felt no need to press the point.

“Uh, I had one other question,” Jak said, “and I was just wondering, since you got to read all the sealed files and so on about the case, whether it’s a question that there’s even an answer to.”

“If I don’t know the answer, I’ll say I don’t know. If I’m not allowed to say, I’ll say I don’t know. I won’t give you any hints about which ‘I don’t know’ that is. Otherwise, I’ll answer.”

“Fair enough,” Jak said. “And it may just not be possible to know. Why did Riveroma have that launch I was on shot down? It must have cost a fortune in money, time, and effort to hack into the old sandgun system and do that, and he couldn’t have been certain I’d be killed, and since he didn’t know what I was coming to communicate about, anyway, why would he shoot me down before he heard the offer? The whole thing made no sense at all.”

Gweshira laughed, long and hard, and said, “Jak, that was something we looked into right away.

Riveroma had nothing to do with it. Remember Paj Priuleter, the preacher among the survivors? His wife was trying to kill him for the life insurance, and she wanted the kind of freak accident that gets double indemnity.”

Jak laughed too. “Nothing ever goes exactly as planned, does it?”

“Nothing. Which is why I really want you to forgive Sib, look up honor-binding, and get on with things, because, toktru, old pizo, whether we try to lead a quiet life or go looking for trouble, none of us ever knows what’s coming next.” She stood up, so he did; they shook hands. “Well, I hope you have some fun in these few days before you start at the Academy.”

“It just figures that for the first time in all those years of schooling, probably no one will ask me to write any essays about what I did on my vacation. Yeah, Duj and I have fun stuff planned; I’m supposed to meet him up at the pole in half an hour or so—Myx is coming in, finally, on that very conveniently scheduled warship from Uranium that just happened to have an extra berth. I speck Myx and Duj just want me to be the ref.”

Gweshira smiled. “Whatever you do, don’t stand between them. See you later.”

She turned and walked away. Jak had a few minutes to kill before he’d need to call Rover and have it take him to the station, and since he knew Duj was always a few minutes late anyway, there wasn’t much pressure of any kind. He decided to walk for a bit.

He heard a loud woman’s voice; she sounded young. “What’s the name of that club, again? I thought I knew it. I thought it was something about a flower—can you remind me?” Her voice was coming from around the nearest corner.

“I’m not equipped for that,” the Pertrans reminded her in its flat mechanical tone.

When he came around one corner, Jak saw the beautiful young woman he’d noticed while talking to Gweshira. She was standing by a Pertrans at that stop. “Crane O’Hanna,” she said, suddenly, “that’s the club. But hold a minute.”

Crane O’Hanna was the very lightest of the light dance clubs—expensive, but interesting.

“Hey,” she said, “aren’t you on viv? Jak somebody?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’ve been through that viv a hundred times,” she said, and sighed. She turned and got into the Pertrans car. “Crane O’Hanna,” she said, again, very loudly.

The Pertrans car pulled away.

She had certainly had a nice body, and dressed to make sure everyone knew it. And she’d gone out of her way to make sure that Jak in particular knew where she was going.

He thought for less than half a second before he summoned Rover and headed for the same club, not knowing what he had in mind, but figuring it could develop. No doubt Myx and Duj would manage to have a perfectly fine fight without him. As Gweshira said, nothing, absolutely nothing, ever went according to plan.

Acknowledgments

George Orwell said that writing a novel is like contracting a lingering illness; the metaphorical illness would have been much more severe and lingered much longer this time without gracious and judiciously timed pressure by Betsy Mitchell, my editor; efficient and prompt support on business matters by Ashley Grayson, Carolyn Grayson, and Dan Hooker, of the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency; and quick, voluminous, precise research by Jes Tate, my research assistant. Thanks to them, I kept more hair, gained less weight, and delivered almost on time.

About The Author

JOHN BARNES lives in downtown Denver and writes full time. At various times he has worked full time as a gardener, systems analyst, statistician, theatrical lighting designer, and college professor. More than fifty entries by John Barnes appear in the 4th edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. His most recent books include The Sky So Big And Black, The Merchants Of Souls, The Return (wth Buzz Aldrin), and Candle.