The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (27 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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He woke to the touch of a hand on his forehead, and a familiar voice speaking—almost shouting—somewhere inside his skull.
We’re coming up on a checkpoint. Hide.
He drew breath to ask a question, but the hand moved to cover his mouth.
Don’t worry about me,
said the voice again.
Just get out of sight!
The transport was indeed slowing to a halt. He abandoned Llannat to her own devices and started burrowing. As soon as he’d gotten himself well-hidden under what felt like a hundred pounds or so of nourishing fibrous vegetables, he risked peering out through between two of the sacks. Llannat wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“May I see your transportation request and vehicle log, please?” said an unfamiliar voice in a bored monotone.
Standard Galcenian,
thought Jessan.
That takes care of the language problem, anyhow.
“Sure,” said another voice from the transport’s cab. “Just a second … here they are.”
“Hmmm … stamps from checkpoints BX-BY and BY-ZERO-TWO-SEVEN dash zero-two-eight … you’re carrying
garrutchy
from District BX-one-four-three to Central Storage?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, everything looks in order. I’ll just do a quick visual, and then you can go on.”
Boot heels rang on asphalt, and Jessan shrank even deeper into the hiding place he’d excavated. Down among the sacks of
garrutchy,
loose dirt tickled his nostrils, and he felt a sudden overwhelming desire to sneeze. He quit breathing instead.
The booted footsteps came around to the rear of the transport. Jessan heard the tailgate lower partway, and felt the bags about him begin to shift. The guard must have noticed the movement, too—there was an oath, and the tailgate slammed back up again. Under cover of the noise, Jessan exhaled and gulped another lungful of air.
“Looks all right,” said the guard’s voice. Jessan heard the dull, irregular thudding of an official stamp being pounded down in all the required locations on a set of forms in triplicate. Then the guard’s voice said, “Here you go now: Move along,” and the transport’s engines growled back into life.
Jessan waited until the noise was back up to its earlier level before squirming out from under the bags of
garrutchy.
Sometime in there, Llannat had reappeared as well. The Adept was leaning back against the side of the cargo compartment with her eyes closed.
“Welcome back,” he said. “Where’d you go?”
She shook her head. “Nowhere. You just didn’t happen to look where I was. Time to start tidying up, I think—that checkpoint probably means we’re getting close to town.”
Jessan began brushing the dirt off his clothing. “Right. You drop off first, then.”
A few minutes later, the transport slowed to go through an intersection. Llannat got a secure grip on the side of the cargo compartment, then swung over and out of sight.
Now it’s your turn
, Jessan told himself.
Think of it as another round of amateur theatricals—and you’ve got the part of a garrutchy grower in town for the weekend.
The flight of fancy made him laugh a little under his breath. He scrambled over the tailgate before he could get stage fright, and lowered himself down to the pavement.
 
Beka woke up with a start.
What was that?
She levered herself up on her elbows and listened, trying to catch again the anomaly that had awakened her, but she heard nothing—no engine irregularities, no noises of impact on the hull, only a deep and unnatural silence.
Right. We’re grounded. And the power’s off.
She looked over at the glowing face of the chronometer bolted to the bulkhead next to the bunk, where a turn of her head on the pillow could give her the time.
Thirteen-thirty-point-five-one Standard. Not a real useful piece of information.
She got up, stretching to work the kinks out of her back and shoulders, and dressed by the dim blue light of the self-powered emergency glows. The question of persona had her chewing her lower lip for a moment in front of the clothes locker; then she nodded to herself and pulled open the section that held Tarnekep Portree’s dirtside outfits.
Better safe than sorry,
she reflected, tying the high cravat with an ease gained over months of practice.
Beka Rosselin-Metadi is dead, and Darvell is no place for her to be spotted among the living.
She fitted the red eye patch into place and walked out through the silent ship.
Outside, the long golden light of late afternoon slanted down through the tops of the tall trees. Near the middle of the clearing, her brother sat next to a small fire. A cookpot dangled from a stick above the flames, and Ari looked around from stirring it as she came down the
’Hammer’s
ramp.
“So you’re up.”
She yawned. “More or less. Did I sleep all day?”
“That’s right. The sun’s starting to go down.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“The Professor is still asleep,” her brother said. “Llannat and Jessan haven’t come back yet, but I think it’s too early to worry. I wrestled our hoverbikes out of the cargo hold and then went hunting—mostly to see if anything Ferrda taught me stuck. Something must have, because we’ve got dinner.”
“Why the outdoorsman routine?” she asked, as the savory smell of game stew reached her nostrils.
“The Professor cut the power levels on both ships to minimize energy leakage around the masking field. That left the power too low to run the galleys. He says we won’t be staying here long anyway.”
Ari tasted the stew, nodded to himself, and turned away from the fire. Beka followed the motion, and saw a heavy blaster lying with its belt and holster near his right hand.
“Is that what you went hunting with?” she asked.
Ari shook his head. “No. If I shot something with that, there wouldn’t be enough left for the stewpot. Besides, I never was any good with one of these things.”
He picked up the holstered weapon by its belt and held it out toward her. “Speaking of which—I think that you’re the one who should have this.”
Beka took the belt, then pulled the blaster out of its holster and hefted it—not as weighty as the government-surplus models she’d been using lately, but heavier than the new Space Force standard issue. “Gyfferan,” she said, after a moment. “Dadda’s?”
“That’s right. He gave it to me when I left the Academy. Said I might need it someday.”
“Everybody needs something,” Beka said. “Was he right?”
“What do you think?” asked her brother. “Sometimes I wonder about those hunches of his, let me tell you.”
Beka grinned. “Trust an old starpilot. You know what they say—Adepts have power, and pilots have luck.”
“And what does that leave the rest of us?”
She looked at him for a moment—damn near seven feet tall with his boots off, and all of it muscle. Not her style, but Jilly Oldigaard had daydreamed for weeks after the time he’d come home for a visit in his Academy uniform. “The rest of us? Well, big brother—you may not have power, but you certainly do have plenty of mass times acceleration.”
“Very funny,” he growled. “Do you want the blaster or not?”
“I’ll take it, I’ll take it.”
She unbuckled the heavy leather belt that held her own sidearm and laid it aside, then strapped on the Gyfferan weapon. Not surprisingly, the belt was far too large for her. It settled low on her hips, sagging even lower on the weapon side.
“Needs work,” she said. She caught a glimpse of Ari’s face. “One laugh and I’ll kill you.”
 
H
ANDS IN his pockets, Jessan strolled down the quiet, well-kept streets. Most of the people he saw had on what looked like uniforms of some kind, but others wore the sort of casual civilian clothing favored by free-spacers and others whose business took them from world to world; so far, he didn’t feel too conspicuous. He spotted an announcement kiosk on one corner, and sauntered over to check out the monitors.
PLAN OF THE DAY said the heading on the largest screen. Jessan stepped closer and started to read.
“Excuse me, sir. May I please see your identification?” said a soft voice behind him.
Jessan turned. A young man stood looking at him. The friendly expression on the watcher’s clean-cut features didn’t offset the nightstick, the blaster, and the “Duty Guard” brassard around one uniformed arm.
The Khesatan did his best to look innocent. “Is there a problem, sir?”
“All personnel are required to read and be familiar with the Plan of the Day prior to noon,” the young man explained. “And it’s way past fourteen hundred. May I see your ID?”
“Sure,” said Jessan, reaching into the right inside pocket of his jacket. He brought his hand out again empty, and shook his head. “Must be in the other one … I’ll have it for you in a minute.”
He tried the left inside pocket and both the big zippered outer pockets, coming up empty each time.
“You’re supposed to carry your ID in your left top front shirt pocket when you’re not in uniform,” the duty guard informed him helpfully. “Why don’t you look there?”
“Shirt pocket,” Jessan said. “Of course.” Then, a moment later, “Oh, dear. I think I forgot to transfer my card when I changed shirts.”
The duty guard looked dubious, and Jessan held his breath.
Let it slide, damn you
.
But today wasn’t going to be his lucky day, it seemed. The duty guard shook his head and brought out a small notebook. “I’m afraid that I’ll have to put you on report for failure to carry required documents. What’s your unit and section?”
“My unit and section?” echoed Jessan, stalling for time while he tried to think. He saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and then Llannat’s black-clad figure seemed to materialize next to the duty guard.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, in a soft, hesitant voice. “But can you help me?”
The duty guard looked down at her. “Of course, miss. What’s the problem?”
Llannat looked at the pavement. “I’m new here, and I think I’m lost. They told me to turn right and I’d see the Mini-Mart, but I got all mixed up and now I don’t know where I am.” She lifted her head again, and gave the duty guard a smile. “So, please, could you tell me how to find the Mini-Mart?”
“Of course, miss,” the young man began.
“You’re
so
nice to help me like this!” exclaimed Llannat, with a deep sigh of relief—rather too deep for realism, Jessan thought critically, but the guard appeared too fascinated by Llannat’s snug black sweater to notice any minor flaws in the Adept’s performance.
“Actually, miss,” the guard said, managing to look serious and hopeful at the same time, “I’m afraid the directions from here might be kind of confusing. It’s almost the end of my shift—why don’t I just walk you there instead?”
“Oh,
thank you
!” Llannat exclaimed, treating the duty guard to another radiant smile.
Time to leave our friend to Mistress Hyfid’s tender mercies,
thought Jessan.
This is where I say good-bye.
He faded out of sight around the corner and resumed his stroll down the street in the westering light, taking care not to be seen reading any more signs. As he walked, he kept hearing Beka’s voice, back in the sickbay of the asteroid base: “
So calm and law-abiding it’s unnatural.
”
The captain had spoken truer than she knew. After rough, muddy Nammerin and gaudy, wide-open Pleyver, Jessan found this Darvelline town almost eerie in its polished perfection. Everywhere he looked along the wide, straight streets he saw nothing but order: carefully tended lawns and identical three-story buildings, painted sparkling white under their red tile roofs and set well back from the spotless sidewalks. There wasn’t a scrap of litter or garbage anywhere.
A building came up on his right. The large sign on the wall by the door proclaimed the structure’s occupants to be the Housing and Transportation Section, Second Level.
Local intelligence
, he reminded himself.
Time to get some
.
Jessan went in. The decor in the entrance foyer featured colorful posters (LIFT WITH YOUR LEGS, NOT WITH YOUR BACK!, in orange holographic lettering), a bulletin board announcing a dance and assorted sporting events, and a wall rack holding a selection of health and safety pamphlets. A placard over the rack suggested TAKE ONE, which meant that browsing was probably safe and possibly even required.
Jessan flipped through the available offerings. After a moment’s consideration, he pulled out several, including a copy of “Welcome to Darvell—Know Your Rights and Duties.”
He tucked the pamphlets into his inside jacket pocket, and looked about the foyer again. Off to his right, he spotted a door labeled SHIPPING/DISTRIBUTION—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in black stencil on translucent plastic. Jessan ran a hand over his breeze-ruffled hair and straightened his jacket. Then, after a moment’s pause, he palmed the lockplate.
If the door asks for a clearance, I’m stuck. But if they just want to keep out sightseers …
The door panel slid aside. Jessan walked in, and up to the young man seated at the nearest desk.
“Comm-code listing,” he said, in his best “don’t ask questions, just do it” tone of voice.
The young man at the desk didn’t look up from the comp screen and the stack of invoices in front of him. “Official or commercial?”
“Official.”
Still without taking his eyes from the comp screen, the young man reached over to the shelf at his right hand, pulled out a directory, and handed it across. “Don’t take it out of the office.”
“Right,” Jessan said, and stood beside the desk while he thumbed through the fat volume. “It’s not in here,” he said pettishly, after a few minutes. “Can I see the commercial listings?”
“We don’t keep those here,” the young man said. “Try Statistics and Tariffs.”
“Thanks anyway,” Jessan said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” said the young man, eyes still glued to the screen. He pulled another invoice from the stack. “Have a nice day.”
Once back out on the street, Jessan began to feel a bit more sanguine about the whole idea of intelligence gathering. The next building along bore the label QUALITY ASSURANCE BRANCH, CHIEF. FURNITURE INSPECTION. Jessan looked at the sign for a moment, shrugged, and entered.
He walked past another AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign into another office, where a small group of young men and women in uniform stood around a drink dispenser. One of the men looked up when Jessan came in. “May we help you?”
“I’m hunting for a commercial comm-code listing.”
The young man frowned a moment, and then turned toward the woman whom Jessan had already pegged as the senior in the crowd—a statuesque blonde about the Khesatan’s own age, with more elaborate rank insignia than the others, a wider variety of colored patches and tabs on her uniform tunic, and a general air of having been around the system for a while.
“We got any of those, ma’am?” the young man asked.
She nodded. “Sure do, Starky. Printing and Distribution dropped off a whole box just last week. Go fetch Mister … ?”
“Jamil,” said the Khesatan hastily.
“Mister Jamil one.”
Starky hurried off, and the woman—Specialist One Griff, according to the nametag on her uniform—asked, “Care for a cup of
uffa
while you wait?”
“Sure.”
Griff pulled a cup from a rack on the wall and worked it under the spout of the dispenser. Red liquid poured into the container. When the machine cut off, she handed Jessan the cup and asked, “Where do you work?”
He took a swallow of the
uffa
. The hot drink had a sharp, sweetish flavor, plus the familiar jolt of a mild stimulant. “Down at Housing and Transportation.”
“When do you people knock off for the day? We still have ten minutes to go.”
“We knock off at the same time you do. I got sent to get one of the new code lists.”
The commercial comm list showed up then, in time to save him from any further awkward inquiries. He took the printout and began to thumb through it. A quick glance revealed that the twenty or so pages of small print covered much more than a single township.
“Thanks,” he said aloud, folding the printout in half twice and slipping it into one of the outer pockets of his jacket.
“No problem,” said Griff. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
Nobody in the group seemed upset by the possibility, so Jessan ordered his heart down out of his larynx and back into the position his old Anatomy of the Vertebrate Sentients text said it ought to occupy. “That’s right. How’d you guess?”
“I know most of the people down at H and T, and I’d remember seeing you,” Griff said. “I’ll bet you’re staying over in the forty-block quarters, too.”
“Right again,” said Jessan, trying not to sound nervous. The Specialist One had a speculative look in her eye that he didn’t like.
Maybe “forty-block” is a trick question. Fine time to think of that. And me without even a blaster
.
But it seemed that Griff had something other than Operational Security in mind. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “Darvell’s a real friendly place. You’ll get to know people fast. In fact—” She smiled at him, and the speculative look got even more speculative. “—after knock-off we’re all going over to the get-acquainted mixer Civic Affairs is putting on. Want to come along?”
Jessan smiled back, almost dizzy with relief.
There’s all kinds of ways to intelligence-gather. And once we’re at the mixer, I can vanish on my way to the punch bowl.
“Sure,” he said.
 
Beka whirled around, bringing the Gyfferan blaster up from her side to the firing position as she turned. She pressed the stud, and a thin beam of light—the weapon’s “tracer” setting—flashed across the clearing toward a new-cut blaze on a conifer opposite.
“Still a bit low, my lady,” said the Professor’s voice behind her.
She dropped her arm and turned back toward
Defiant
, the blaster in her right hand pointing once more at the ground. “I’m used to something with a bit more weight. But it’ll do when the time comes.”
“Nevertheless,” the Professor said, “practice. The time may come sooner than you think.”
The grey-haired Entiboran came on down
Defiant’s
ramp. For the first time, Beka got a good look at the short ebony staff tucked under his belt. He’d had it back in the docking bay on the asteroid, she remembered, but other things had claimed her attention at the time, and she’d filed away the black and silver rod as something to think about later.
Well, now it’s later.
She looked for a minute at the staff, and shook her head. “Are things going to be that bad?”
Ari had been tasting a spoonful of the game stew. He lifted his head as she spoke, and she saw him look from her to the Professor and back again. He nodded in the general direction of the staff. “You knew?”
“No,” she told him. “But I can’t say it surprises me.” She turned back to the Professor. “Well?” she asked.
The Entiboran smiled. “There comes a time, my lady, when one ceases to worry about attracting unwanted attention.”
Something ran down her spine on little icy feet, and she shivered. But try as she might, she couldn’t read anything in the Professor’s grey eyes except what might have been affection, assuming that her copilot was capable of the emotion.
Ari’s deep voice broke the uncomfortable silence. “If nobody besides me claims any of this stew …”
She forced herself to relax. “Big brother, if you take the whole dinner for yourself and leave the rest of us to break our teeth on unheated space rations, I’ll use you for target practice instead of that tree over there. And I won’t leave the beam on ‘tracer,’ either.”
“Then go get some bowls and spoons from the galley,” he said. “Because this stuff’s done.”
The rest of the awkwardness died in the bustle of fetching utensils, dishing out the savory chunks of meat, and settling down for the meal.
“Good food,” said Beka, a plate or so of stew later. “Who taught you to cook—Ferrda?”

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