Allies (3 page)

Liz'd told her she'd have a uniform when she
got to merc headquarters, the cost to be deducted from her pay. For
now, she wore her best clothes, and carried her new-signed papers
in a bag over her shoulder. In the bag, too, wrapped up in a clean
rag, was a smooth disk–intarsia work, her mother had murmured,
barely able to hold the thing in her two hands.

"It was your grandmother's," she whispered,
"and it came from off-world. It doesn't belong here, and neither do
you."

"I'll send money," Miri said, looking into
her mother's drugged eyes. "As much as I can."

Katy smiled. "You'll have expenses," she
said. "Don't send all your money to me."

Miri bit her lip. "Will you come? Liz
says–"

Katy shook her head. "I won't pass the
physical at the port," she said, and coughed. She turned her head
aside and used a rag to wipe her mouth.

She turned back with a smile, and reached
out her thin hand to rest it on Miri's arm. "You, my daughter.
You're about to begin the adventure of your life. Be bold, which I
know you are. Be as honest as you can. Trust Angela. If you find
love, embrace it."

The cough again, hard this time. Miri caught
her shoulders and held her until it was done. Katy used the rag,
and pushed it down beside her on the chair, but not before Miri saw
it was dyed crimson.

Katy turned back with another smile, wider
this time, and held out arms out. Miri bent and hugged her, feeling
the bones. Her mother's lips brushed her cheek, and her voice
whispered, "Go now."

And so she left, out the door and down the
hall and into the street where Liz Lizardi was waiting, and the
adventure of her life begun.

PRODIGAL SON

Miri
, Val Con thought wryly as he moved silently down the pre-dawn
hallway,
is not going to like
this
.

He paused outside the door to the suite he
shared with his lifemate, took a breath, and put his palm firmly
against the plate.

The door slid aside, and he stepped into
their private parlor, pausing just over the threshold.

Across the room the curtains had been drawn
back from the wide window, admitting Surebleak's uncertain dawn.
The rocking chair placed at an angle to the window moved quietly,
back and forth, back and forth, its occupant silhouetted against
the light.

"What ain't I gonna like?" she asked,
apparently plucking the thought out of his head. Val Con shivered.
The link they shared as lifemates made each aware of the other's
emotions and general state of mind, and there had been instances of
one of them suddenly acquiring a skill or a language which had
previously belonged only to the other. This wholesale snatching of
thoughts from his mind, though–that was new, and in one direction
only. It seemed that Miri could read his mind perfectly well, while
hers was as closed to him in detail as ever it had been. He
wondered, not for the first time, if this was in some way linked to
her pregnancy . . .

"Things looked kinda dicey there for a
while," she went on. "From what I could tell."

"It was not without its moments," he
allowed, moving toward the window. "Even the presence of Scout
Commander ter'Meulen was insufficient to turn all to farce."

"If Clonak was half as stupid as he acts,
something with lotsa teeth would've had him for lunch a long time
ago."

"True," he murmured from the side of her
chair. He reached down and slipped his fingers through the wealth
of her unbound hair. "But you discount the joy of the
masquerade."

"No I don't. I just wonder why he
bothers."

"I believe we must diagnose an excess of
energy."

She snorted. Next to her, he smiled into the
dawn, then sighed.

"Wanna tell me about it?"

"In fact," he said, dropping lightly to the
rug beside her and leaning his head against her thigh; "I do."

"Ready when you are." He felt her hand
stroke his hair and sighed in contentment made more poignant by the
knowledge that it was to be all too brief.

"The highly condensed version," he murmured,
"is that one of the teams the Scouts sent to gather the severed
blossoms of the Department of Interior . . ." She choked a laugh,
and he paused, his eyes on the meager garden below them.

"That's gotta be Clonak," she said.

"Indeed, Commander ter'Meulen was pleased to
style it thus," he said. "Allow it, with the understanding that the
actual business was not nearly so poetical."

He felt her hair move as she shook her head.
"'Course it wasn't."

"Yes, well." Her robe was fleece, soft and
warm under his cheek. "This team of Scouts obtained news of a
situation which . . . lies close to us, cha'trez."

Her hand stilled on his hair. "How close,
exactly?"

"Close as kin," he answered. "It would seem
that the Department deployed a field unit, and perhaps a tech team,
to Vandar after Agent sig'Alda failed them."

He felt her grasp it, and the frisson of her
horror. Her hand fell to his shoulder, fingers gripping.

"We gotta go in," she said, and he smiled at
her quickness. "Zhena Trelu, Hakan, Kem–gods, what if they've
already . . ."

"We have some hope that they have not
already," Val Con murmured. "A field unit is by no means an Agent
of Change. But we dare not tarry."

"We
are
going, then." There was
satisfaction in her voice.

Val Con shook his head.
"Alas,
I
am going.
You, my lady, will stay here and mind Korval's concerns–and our
daughter."

"Got a real hankering for a girl, doncha?
What if the baby's a boy?"

"Then he will doubtless also be as
intelligent and as beautiful as his mother."

Miri laughed, then sobered. "Who's your
backup, then? If I'm staying home to mind the store."

"I thought to travel quickly," he murmured;
"and leave within the hour. Clonak is gathering a contact team. He
expects them to lift out no later than three days from–"

"What you're saying is that you're going in
without any back-up." The rocker moved more strongly; inside his
head, he heard the arpeggio of her irritation.

"Not," she said firmly, "on my watch."

"Cha'trez–"

"Quiet. I ain't gotta tell you how stupid it
is to go into something like this by yourself, 'cause if you'd take
a second think, you'd figure it out for yourself. What I am gonna
tell you is you got two options: I go–or Beautiful goes."

He could not risk her–would not risk their
child. His rejection was scarcely formed when he heard her sigh
over his head.

"My feelings are hurt. But have it your
way." Her hand left his shoulder. He rolled to his feet and helped
her to rise, pulling her into an embrace.

"I will take Nelirikk with me," he whispered
into her ear, and felt her laugh.

"That's a good idea," she murmured. "Glad
you thought of it."

"Indeed." He hugged her tight, and stepped
back. Slipping Korval's Ring from his finger, he handed it to
her.

She shoved it onto her thumb and closed her
fingers around it.

"Get your kit," she said. "I'll call down to
the pilot and give him the good news."

*

It was a good
thing
, Hakan thought sourly,
that he'd come to university to study
guitar
. The storm winds knew what they
might have made him do, if he'd come to study walking. Lie on his
stomach and march on his elbows, legs dragging in the dirt behind
him, probably.

"Zamir Darnill," Zhena Teone, his music
history professor, inquired crisply from the front of the
classroom. "Is there a problem with your zamzorn?"

Besides it being the most
useless instrument in the scope of creation
? Hakan thought. A flute made from a full horn, with a range
of only an octave, its point sharp enough to stab unwary fingers?
No wonder the thing had been abandoned for the ocarina by the
serious musicians of two hundred years ago. He sighed to himself
and looked up.

"A little trouble with the fipple, Zhena,"
he said quietly. No matter his own feelings about flutes cut from
ox horn, Zhena Teone doted on the thing; and if he'd learned
nothing else at university thus far, he had learned that the wise
student didn't provoke his professors.

"Zamir Darnill," his teacher said sadly.
"The zamzorn represents an important part of our musical tradition.
I fear you are giving it neither the respect nor the attention that
it deserves."

"I'm sorry, Zhena," he muttered. "Flute
isn't really my–"

"Flute? Flute indeed!"

Her pause was worth a fortune of concern,
and when she spoke again it was obvious that she was keeping her
voice level.

"Zamir, the king has seen fit to send you
here, and you will have the goodness to learn. I suspect you have
not been carrying the zamzorn on your person, as you have been told
this last ten day, so that it stays at the proper temperature for
playing at a moment's notice. In the past the only thing closer to
a musical zamir than his zamzorn, was his zhena. So carry yours at
all times, yes?"

She caressed the instrument in her hands,
producing a subcurrent of stifled laughter in the room.

"You will have ample time
to pursue your interest in
stringed
instruments
–" she made it sound like a
disease, or at least an unpleasant habit that shouldn't be
mentioned in polite company– "after you have absorbed the lessons
that history has to teach us. Now, then. Has your disagreement with
the fipple been resolved?"

There was an outright titter from the front
row, and Hakan felt his ears heat.

"Yes, Zhena."

"Good. I direct the class's attention once
more to the jig on page forty-five . . ."

*

"A green and pleasant world," Nelirikk said,
as they broke their march for the meal local time decreed as
dinner. "Is it always so chill?"

"Never think it," Val Con answered. "In
fact, I am persuaded there are those native to the world who would
pronounce today balmy in the extreme, and perfect for turning the
garden."

Nelirikk sipped from his canteen. He was,
Val Con thought, a woodsman the like of which Gylles had rarely
seen: bold in black-and-red plaid flannel, work pants, and sturdy
boots, with a red knit cap pulled down over his ears in deference
to the chill of dusk.

The big man finished his drink and resealed
the jug. "This . . . error the captain sends us to correct," he
began.

Val Con lifted an eyebrow. Nelirikk paused,
and was seen to sigh.

"Scout, I do not say it was the captain's
error."

"Nor should you," Val Con said, surprised by
the edge he heard on his own words. He raised a hand, showing empty
palm and relaxed fingers.

"The situation–which might, in truth, be
said to be error–is of my crafting," he said, more mildly. "It was
I who chose to land on an interdicted world. Saying that I did so
in order to preserve the lives of the captain and myself does not
change the decision or the act. Once here, we inevitably accrued
debt, which must of course be Balanced. All of which is aside my
decision to See Hakan Meltz. At the time, I stood as thodelm of
yos'Phelium, so it was not a thing done lightly. And yos'Phelium
abandons a brother even less readily than Korval relinquishes a
child."

Nelirikk was sitting very still, canteen yet
in hand, his eyes noncommittal. Likely he was astonished at such a
rush of wordage. Val Con gave him a wry look.

"You see how my own stupidity rankles," he
said. "I should at least have taken my boots off before leaping
down your throat."

A smile, very slight, disturbed the careful
blandness of Nelirikk's face.

"We have both made errors, I think," he
said. "If ours are larger, or knottier, than the mistakes of the
common troop, it is because our training has given us more
scope."

Val Con grinned.
"
Anyone may break a
glass
," he quoted. "
But it wants a master to break a dozen
."

There was a small silence while Nelirikk
stowed his canteen.

"What I wondered," he said eventually; "is
if we will be able to remove these infiltrators without raising
questions in the minds of the natives. There are, so I'm told by
the Old Scout, certain protocols for operations on forbidden
worlds. If we simply eliminate the enemy . . ."

"If we simply eliminate the enemy, Clonak
will have both of our heads to hang on his office wall," Val Con
said. "No, I fear it must be capture and remove."

Nelirikk frowned, doubtless annoyed by such
inefficiency. "If they've established themselves, any removal will
cause comment among the natives," he pointed out.

"Indeed it will–and the least of the sins I
must bear for choosing survival." Val Con stood and stretched. "If
you are rested, friend Nelirikk, let us go on. Our target is only a
short stroll beyond those trees."

*

The presentation was already underway by the
time Hakan arrived at the Explorers Club. He slid into a chair in
the last row, wincing when the point of the zamzorn he'd crammed
into the inner pocket of his jacket jabbed him in the chest.

"Wind take the thing," he muttered,
shifting. His chair lodged noisy protest, and the zhena beside him
hissed, "Shhhhhh."

Hakan sighed and subsided. It wasn't bad
enough that he was late for the meeting because of having to attend
remedial class on the stupid thing, but now it was outright trying
to kill him.

He tried to ignore his irritation and
focused his attention on the front of the room. Tonight's lecture
was entitled "The Future of Aerodynamics," a subject which at first
glance seemed more alien to the interests of a guitarist than even
the wind-blasted zamzorn. Hakan, however, had acquired an
obsession.