Or perhaps the island's narrow streets simply discouraged groundcar traffic. The Parra vine, of course, discouraged anything else.
The Parra. Cavanagh looked up as they walked along, peering past the lights at the dark branches of the thick vine lattice arching over the city only meters above the taller buildings around them. Centuries earlier in the leisurely herbaceous war going on all over Granparra, the Parra vine had won the battle for Puerto Simone Island, choking out the other, more deadly forms of plant life that still held sway on the continent across Sereno Strait. That victory had made the island livable for human beings; but at the same time the Parra's dominating presence had presented challenges all its own. The lattice was home to thousands of monkey-sized grooma, living in an only partially understood symbiosis with the vine, who swarmed to screaming attack against anyone who attempted to cut or sometimes even just move a section of the Parra. Livestock who chewed on the vine got the same treatment, a problem that was aggravated by the groomas' unexplained fondness for investigating, playing with, and ultimately wrecking the fences the herd keepers used to keep their livestock away from the Parra.
And hanging over it all was the dark, unpleasant question of whether the Parra was in fact sentient. Whether it was listening or watching everything these upstart humans were doing on its island. And if so, what it was thinking.
The group had walked for perhaps fifteen minutes when they finally reached Piltariab's landmark. "There," he said, waving a hand and soy-sauce aroma toward a cross street fifty meters ahead of them. "There-just past the spice market. To the right, down at the end of that street, is Moo Sab Bokamba's home."
"Great," Kolchin said. "I hope he's in tonight." He brushed up against Cavanagh; and out of sight of the three Avuirli, he caught the older man's wrist and gave it a brief but sharp squeeze.
Cavanagh caught the cue. "Ow!" he grunted, lifting his supposedly injured left wrist.
"What is it, Moo Sab Stymer?" Piltariab asked, stepping close to Cavanagh, a rush of baking-oat-bread concern momentarily supplanting the soy sauce. "Is your injury worse?"
"I brushed it against that vegetable stand," Cavanagh said, wincing for effect as he cradled his left wrist protectively with his right hand. "I'll be all right."
"I'd better take a look," Kolchin said, shrugging his backpack off as he eased Cavanagh to the side of the street. "This will only take a minute, Moo Sab Piltariab," he added, opening the pack and rummaging through it. "Why don't you and your friends go on ahead, make sure Moo Sab Bokamba is home and willing to see us? We'll be right with you."
"There is nu need fur haste," Mitliriab said. "We can wait fur yu tu finish with him."
"No, no, let us not wait," Piltariab said, his solicitude lost again to his eagerness. "They will be all right. Come-Moo Sab Bokamba's home is close at hand. Come."
Mitliriab and Brislimab exchanged glances, and again Cavanagh caught a whiff of that unidentified aromotional scent. "As yu insist," Mitliriab said, looking at Kolchin. "Yu will catch up with us, Mu Sab Plex."
"Of course," Kolchin assured him.
For a handful of heartbeats the Avuire stared at him. Then, without further comment, he turned away. With Piltariab at the lead the three Avuirli rejoined the pedestrian flow and continued down the street.
"That sounded like an order," Cavanagh muttered as Kolchin pulled their medkit from the backpack.
"It certainly wasn't a question," Kolchin agreed, pretending to treat Cavanagh's wrist. "There's something about all this that Mitliriab and Brislimab are definitely not happy with."
Cavanagh chewed the inside of his cheek. "You think it has something to do with us?"
"I don't think so," Kolchin said slowly. "At least not directly. Annoyed Avuirli usually aren't very subtle-if they were mad at us, we'd have heard about it by now."
Cavanagh shivered. As a species, Avuirli were pretty even-tempered; but all sentient creatures could get angry, and Avuirli had the muscle power to make anger a distinctly unpleasant experience for everyone in the vicinity. "Something about Piltariab, then?"
"That's getting closer," Kolchin said, returning the medkit to the backpack and pulling out the binoculars. "But that's not quite it, either," he added, handing the binoculars to Cavanagh and sealing the backpack again. "Let me know when they've turned into that side street."
"Right." Cavanagh peered over his shoulder as he looped the binoculars' strap around his neck. "They're going in now."
"Good." Kolchin slung the backpack up onto one shoulder. "Let's go."
They hurried ahead, ducking around and between unhurried shoppers to the side street Piltariab had indicated. Instead of turning right, though, Kolchin led them to the left, into the street branching off in the opposite direction. Unlike the right-hand branch, which Cavanagh could see now was narrow but basically residential, this side seemed to be a cross between an alley and a garbage-storage facility. A half-dozen highly aromatic chest-high garbage bins lined each side at this end, with random bits of broken boxes and decaying refuse scattered around. Like most of the streets they'd been on since leaving the docks, the alley's surface consisted of closely fitted flagstones; unlike those other streets, no one here had seen fit to put much effort into maintenance. "What now?" he asked as Kolchin positioned them on opposite sides of the alley, behind the last of the garbage bins.
"We see what kind of reception the Avuirli get," Kolchin said. With his left hand he lowered his backpack to the ground; with his right he drew his flechette pistol from beneath his jacket and clicked off the safety. "We also see how good your memory for faces is."
Cavanagh grimaced as he turned on the binoculars and held them up to his eyes. He'd met Bokamba only once, back at the Parliament's Copperhead hearings. Whether he could recognize the man now, several years later, was going to be problematic.
The three Avuirli were about three quarters of the way down the street, approaching the house at the end. "They're almost there," he told Kolchin, adjusting the light-amplification contrast slightly. "Piltariab must really be anxious to get there-he's practically running."
"Interesting," Kolchin said thoughtfully. "I can't remember ever seeing an Avuire run before."
Cavanagh frowned, searching his memory. Now that Kolchin mentioned it, he couldn't either. Avuirli were built for strength, not speed. "You're right," he agreed, an odd feeling starting to twist through his stomach. "What could Bokamba have said to him to spark that much enthusiasm in coming back?"
Kolchin never had a chance to answer. At that moment, from behind them in the alleyway, came a quiet voice, barely audible over the noise from the nearby shops. "Hold it steady, both of you. Kolchin, lose the gun."
Cavanagh turned his face away from the binoculars and looked sideways across the alley at Kolchin. The young bodyguard hadn't moved, nor had his expression changed. But the tendons of his gun hand were suddenly pressing visibly through the skin. Preparing for violent action... "No," Cavanagh murmured urgently. "Not now. Not here."
For a long moment he thought Kolchin was going to try it anyway. Then, to his relief, the other let out a long, strangled-sounding breath and lowered his hand from the garbage bin, letting the flechette pistol drop to the ground. Lifting his hands shoulder high, he turned slowly around. Swallowing hard, Cavanagh did the same.
Brigadier Petr Bronski was standing alone three meters away in the middle of the alley, holding a small flechette pistol in a no-nonsense marksman's grip. The gun, and his full attention, were fixed on Kolchin. "Smart lad," Bronski said approvingly. "You know the rest of the routine: hands on top of your head, fingers laced together. You too, Cavanagh."
"So it was a trap, after all," Kolchin said as he and Cavanagh complied.
"No, it was just me playing a hunch," Bronski said. "Nice to know I've still got it. Just kick the gun over this way."
"What kind of hunch were you playing?" Cavanagh asked as Kolchin complied, sending his flechette pistol clattering across the uneven flagstones toward Bronski.
"That you'd gone to ground on Granparra," Bronski said, taking a step forward and stooping down to pick up the gun. A loose paving stone rocked under his feet as he straightened up again. "I was able to locate and pull a copy of the message the Klyveress ci Yyatoor sent to your son Aric on Edo."
Cavanagh frowned. "She sent Aric a message? What was in it?"
"She wanted him to collect some electronics modules and bring them to her on Phormbi." Reaching under his jacket at the small of his back, Bronski produced a set of wristcuffs and tossed them onto the ground at Cavanagh's feet. "Put them on Kolchin," he instructed. "Hands behind his back, of course."
"I don't understand what a message from Klyveress has to do with anything," Cavanagh said, his mind racing as he picked up the wristcuffs and crossed the alley to Kolchin. No backup had yet appeared-could Bronski really have come there alone? If so, they might still have a chance of getting away.
But only up to the point where Kolchin's hands were cuffed. After that their chances dropped nearly to zero. Somehow Cavanagh had to find a way to stall the completion of that order.
Or find a way to fake it.
"Like I said, it was a hunch," Bronski said. "We had an alert out all over the Commonwealth watching for the Mrach fighter you stole on Mra-mig. When it didn't turn up anywhere, I figured you must have talked the ci Yyatoor into trading ships with you, which meant you were going to owe her something."
"That's it exactly," Cavanagh acknowledged, pausing beside Kolchin and looking at Bronski. "She insisted I send her some command/switching modules in exchange for the ship she gave me. How did you know?"
"With Yycromae there's always a quid pro quo." Bronski waved his gun slightly toward Kolchin. "Come on, get those cuffs on."
"Only I haven't been able to send them," Cavanagh said, stepping around behind Kolchin and fastening one ring of the wristcuffs onto his left wrist. Standing behind Kolchin this way, he was partially out of Bronski's sight... and unbeknownst to the brigadier, he still had Kolchin's backup flechette pistol hidden beneath his jacket. Should he try to ease it out and slip it into Kolchin's belt, where he could get to it with his cuffed hands?
But even if he was able to do all that without Bronski's catching him at it, what then? Could Kolchin get the drop on Bronski and persuade him to surrender? Because if not, the only other option at that point would be to shoot him, and there was no way Cavanagh could justify shooting a Peacekeeper officer who was only doing his job. "We've been here since leaving Phormbi," he added, hoping to keep Bronski talking as he pulled Kolchin's hands down behind his back.
"Which is why she sent that message to your son," Bronski said. "If you'd sent the modules like she wanted, she wouldn't have needed to do that. To me that said you'd gone to ground someplace where you couldn't get to a CavTronics supply house." He shrugged. "Granparra seemed the most likely spot."
"Especially when you found out that Quinn and Aric had been in touch with Wing Commander Bokamba," Cavanagh nodded, positioning the second wristcuff ring around Kolchin's right wrist and trying desperately to figure out how to make it look secure without actually locking it in place. But he couldn't see anywhere else for the locking hook to go. "How long ago did you and he set up this little charade?"
"What charade is that?"
Cavanagh paused, frowning over Kolchin's shoulder at Bronski. The brigadier was eyeing him, apparently in genuine puzzlement. "You know what charade. We had Piltariab take a message to Bokamba three days ago. He sent back a note that we should stay off the island at least two more days."
Bronski's eyes flicked past Cavanagh's shoulder. "Bokamba's not here, Cavanagh," he said. "He was called up to the reserves nearly a month ago."
Something cold shivered along Cavanagh's spine. "But Piltariab said-"
And abruptly all the pieces suddenly fell together in his mind. A trap, all right, but not one orchestrated by Bronski. A fake Bokamba had been set up as a lure, set up by someone who had manipulated Piltariab so well that the Avuire had been impatiently eager to bring him and Kolchin to see him. So eager, in fact, that he'd gone out of his way to persuade two others of his species to join them.
And there was only one group of beings who, expecting humans to walk into their trap, would also have known how to mesmerize a simple Avuirlian sap miner so thoroughly. The same group of beings who, now that Cavanagh knew about their subtle war against humanity, might have felt it worth this much effort to have him silenced.
The Mrachanis.
Cavanagh took a deep breath. "Brigadier-"
And suddenly, from directly behind him, came a blood-chilling roar.
Cavanagh dropped the loose end of the wristcuffs and spun around. Standing beyond the garbage bins at the near end of the alley was the squat, meter-wide figure of a Bhurt, his arms spread wide in challenge. One of the same Bhurtala, if Cavanagh remembered the facial stripe pattern correctly, who had threatened Bronski in the Mrapiratta Hotel back on Mra-mig.
The Bhurt roared again, a vicious and probably insulting taunt in his own language. Then, moving with the deliberate slowness of a bully who knows he has the physical edge on his opponents, he started toward them.
13
"Out of the way!" Bronski snapped. "Cavanagh-!"
Cavanagh needed no encouragement. He threw himself back across the alley, slamming his shoulder against the brick wall with jarring force. Rolling to put his back to the wall, splaying both hands to the sides for stability, he risked a quick look back at Bronski.
The brigadier's left hand had snaked under his jacket, emerging with a new flechette-gun clip. Cavanagh caught a glimpse of bright-red cartridges, started to turn back to the approaching Bhurt-
And jerked his head back again as a movement caught the corner of his eye. At the far end of the alley a shadowy figure had appeared, its black garb silhouetted against the only marginally lighter gloom of the alley, moving swiftly toward Bronski's back, the sounds of its footsteps masked by the roars of the first Bhurt and the shouts and shrieks of scattering pedestrians.
And with a stab of horror Cavanagh understood. The first Bhurt-the one moving slowly and brazenly toward them-was merely a feint. The second one was the real attack.