The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (77 page)

“Toward Poyolavomaar.” Ethan couldn’t quite convince himself that mad Rakossa and Ro-Vijar of Arsudun had conceded so quickly, despite this evidence to the contrary.

“ ’Tis so. Nor have any of our own vessels seen signs of them, though two still search further out to make certain they have truly taken their leave. ’Tis safe I think to say that, finding you not here, they betook themselves elsewhere.”

“I doubt that.” Ethan looked around to see who agreed with his own private opinion. Teeliam Hoh watched the repositioning of the fore portside runner, while the crew leader watched Teeliam. Her thoughts, though, were not on the delicate operation taking place over the side.

“Tonx Rakossa would not leave me alive while he remains so. While I live free, his thoughts will be on naught else.”

“Maybe he and Ro-Vijar had an argument,” Ethan half-joked, “and he lost.”

“I hope not.”

“What? But you’ve said …”

She stared at him, cold cat-eyes dark as the waters beneath the ice sea. “If he should be slain by someone unknown, far from here, if he should perish before we again meet, then I will be barred the delicious opportunity of killing him myself.” She spoke calmly, as if discussing the most ordinary, obvious thing in the world.

“Of course. I should’ve thought of that.”

She continued to stare at him, her head cocked slightly to one side. “You fancy you know us, do you not, Sir Ethan?”

“Know you?” Ethan felt glad of the expression-distorting face mask and the goggles behind. “Teeliam, I’ve lived among you for more than a year now.”

“ ’Tis true then, you indeed believe you know us. I’ve seen it in your gestures, in the way you converse with your companions from this distant land of Sofold. But you do not understand us. When I spoke of killing the Thing, it showed in your body and your way of forming words.

“You are …” she paused, half-smiled, “much too civilized, in the sense I believe you use that term. For all that you have shared with such as the magnificent Sir Hunnar and my good friend Elfa, they are still not part of you, nor you of them. They are part of me and this world. You will never change that.” There was pride in her tone, and a hint of arrogance.

“Perhaps not.” He knew better than to argue with such a recalcitrant customer. “I can only try to help as best I can, the people I’ve come to care for so strongly.”

Teeliam grunted noncommitally, chivaned away. Ethan was unable to tell whether she was voicing a deeply felt opinion, or if such challenge and gruffness were traits forced upon her by the actions of Rakossa. The results might simply have made her resentful of anyone who happened to be happy or optimistic.

Or male.

Still, he considered her words apart from their emotion-charged source. How well
did
he know any Tran? He counted Elfa, Hunnar, and many others his friends. But he had to admit there were occasions when he could not puzzle out their reasoning, or they his. Might they be doomed to exist forever as psychological pen-pals, able to communicate but only across a vast mental sea of alienness? So indeed he might not know them as well as he thought. As to never getting to know them, that he hoped was the brash opinion of one used to dealing only in absolutes.

Of one thing he was certain. Despite Teeliam’s insistence, contact with and membership in the Commonwealth would change the Tran, and their world. It had happened to other primitive peoples. Several had already risen to coequal status with human and thranx, and had been raised to full membership within the government. Others were working hard. Perseverance coupled with safe and benevolent supervision by the government and the United Church would aid any less sophisticated society in making the transition to a modern space-traversing technology with as little pain as possible.

That there sometimes was pain he could not deny, even to himself. That pain would be lessened considerably as soon as they returned to Brass Monkey and conveyed news of their discovery to the proper authorities—doing so took precedence over adding new states to the Trannish confederation. He had no doubt they could swing wide around Poyolavomaar and return to Arsudun uncontested.

He lost a mental step. What could they do, what should they do, on reaching the distant humanx outpost? Who could they report to? He was still unsure of Jobius Trell’s exact involvement with Calonnin Ro-Vijar. There was a possibility that Trell was operating directly with the Landgrave of Arsudun. September seemed to think so, but they had no firm proof.

Not that he was inclined to shrug off the giant’s opinions. More than once September had hinted that he was used to dealing with a higher echelon of power than was Ethan, that analyzing the motives and actions of power-wielders was not new to him.

Consider that Trell was the Resident Humanx Commissioner, that he had knowledge of every aspect of outpost operation. Brass Monkey had a few peace-forcers, stationed there more to protect the natives from the humanx than vice versa. Were they in league with Trell, or with Ro-Vijar directly? And what about the customs handlers, or the portmaster Xenaxis, not to mention the computers and processors?

Who within the modest complement stationed at the outpost could they entrust with such a momentous set of discoveries? Who could not only record and preserve such information against a possibly hostile bureaucracy, but could also transmit that knowledge to incorruptibles offplanet, where they would quickly become so widely disseminated that neither Trell nor anyone else could conceal them?

He took the problem to September. The giant was sitting on the frozen shoreline, his white hair blending into the background of sea and land.

September was not moving, simply staring motionless at the sheet of snow-dusted white where it ran up against the walls of the canyon. It was unusual to see him in such a reflective, downright pensive mood.

“Still in the egg?” The thranx phrase had long since entered the burgeoning roster of interspecies colloquialisms.

“Mmmm? Oh, hello, young feller-me-lad.” How oddly quiet he was, Ethan thought, as he turned his attention back to the ice. “No, not in the egg.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“My brother. Leastwise, the man who was my brother once.”

“You mentioned him before, a long time ago.” Ethan sat down alongside the mountainous form. “You said, ‘I had a brother, once.’ I didn’t understand what you meant by ‘once.’ ”

September’s mouth relaxed into a grin. He was watching the antics of two furry beetle-sized creatures. They were performing a miniature ice-ballet, skittering smoothly about where the shore met the frozen river.

“I suppose technically we’re still brothers. Once born one, I guess you’re stuck with it. Haven’t seen him in twenty, twenty-five years. I’ve done a lot of growin’ up since then. Sometimes wonder if he has, though I doubt it.”

“If you haven’t seen him, then how do you know he hasn’t, as you say, done any growing up?”

“You don’t understand, feller-me-lad. Sawbill, he was born bad.” Long minutes of quiet passed. September raised his gaze from skate-bugs to skating clouds racing overhead. “Got himself into a rotten, stinking business much too soon. That’s a part of it.”

“What kind of business?” September hardly ever talked about himself, and then always in his joking manner. To find him both loquacious and introspective was rare enough that Ethan forgot his original reason for seeking out the big man and probed on.

“He dug too deeply into … well, put it brief, he trained himself to become an emoman.”

Ethan knew of the men and women and thranx who sold emotions. Their status was only marginally legal, and what they sold was usually best left hidden away in the darker sections of hospitals. Commonwealth law guaranteeing so much freedom kept them from being closed down, though it could not prevent the occasional killing of one who grew too bold, or remained in one place too long. The social side-effects of their profession being what they were, few chose it as a life’s work. An emoman (or woman) rarely grew rich. There were other satisfactions to the profession, however, which induced a few to practice it. That gave rise to the saying that the most likely candidate for an emoman’s trade was himself.

“There was a girl,” September continued, rushing the words as if anxious to be rid of them. “There’s always a girl.” He chuckled in a bitter, bad-tasting sort of way. “I was interested in her, too much so. I was very young then. Sawbill was also interested in her… as a customer, and in other ways.

“We argued, we fought. I thought… anyhow, Sawbill sold her something he shouldn’t have. She wanted it—it’s a free galaxy. But he shouldn’t have done it. She was—repressed, I think’s the best way o’ puttin’ it. What Sawbill sold her made her unrepressed. Anyways, she overdosed herself. She—” his expression twisted horribly, “became somethin’ less than human but more than dead. Voluntarily turned herself into a commodity. Not a lynx or somethin’ decent like that, but something lower, beneath vileness, who—” He stopped, unable to continue.

Ethan wondered if he dared say anything. Finally he spoke as softly, gently as he could. “Maybe if you could find her now. She might’ve changed, tossed what she was engulfed by, and you could—”

“Lad, I said she overdosed herself. She didn’t follow instructions. Happens all the time to those who make use of an emoman’s merchandise.” There was a mountainous sadness in his voice.

“When Sawbill finally stopped supplyin’ her, she hunted up others who would. I can’t find her because she’s dead, lad. To me and most o’ the worlds, anyway. She just sort of got eaten away from the inside. Not physically. That I might’ve been able to cope with. The body did just fine, ’til it got used up too. By the time that started, her mind was long gone.” He turned his attention back to the ice.

“I hope she’s dead, Ethan. Should’ve done her a great kindness and killed her myself. I couldn’t, but as I told you, I was very young then. Everything Sawbill did was perfectly legal. He was always very careful about that. Probably still is, whatever he’s doing.”

“But couldn’t you have stopped him, legal or not? The man was your brother. Couldn’t he see what he was doing to the girl?”

“Feller-me-lad, emomen have their own code, their own set o’ morals. ’Cording to his way of thinkin’, he wasn’t doing a thing to her. She was doin’ it to herself. Commonwealth law sides with him. Emomen’s drugs have never proven addictive, not like something such as bloodhype, say. They’re big on legality. Not morality.”

“How can you act legally and not morally?” Ethan wanted to know.

September laughed, looking with pity at his young friend. “Feller-me-lad, you don’t know much about government, do you? Or law.”

“Government—that reminds me.” Ethan hastened to change the subject. He’d tunneled too deeply into another’s soul and had entered hollows he now wished he’d stayed out of. “How are we going to make our discoveries known to proper Commonwealth authorities without letting anyone cover them up?”

“So you’re finally as suspicious of Trell as I am, feller-me-lad?”

“Almost.”

“Good enough. Never trust an official who smiles that much.”

“He knows everything that happens in Brass Monkey. We need someone who can command a closed beam for off-world transmission.”

“Isn’t—anyone,” September grunted. He seemed hard at work on the problem, having already forgotten the moody discourse of moments ago. “Wait now.” He rose, towered over Ethan. “Ought to be one office that can send closed messages.”

“Don’t keep me guessing, Skua. Trell’s Commissioner, and he can—”

“Think a second, feller-me-lad. Brass Monkey’s large enough to rate a padre.”

Being only ah occasional church-goer, and less religious than most, Ethan hadn’t thought of the local representative of the United Church. No one, least of all a comparatively minor functionary like Trell, would dare tamper with a sealed Church communication.

“Now that that little gully’s crossed, let’s go back and see if we can’t help put our ship back together, eh, young feller-me-lad?”

They left the shore and headed toward the icerigger. The fifth and final duralloy runner, the steering skate, was being hoisted into place at her stern. Ethan snatched a surreptitious glance at his companion. The patina of indestructible confidence had returned to his expression, only slightly tarnished.

Skua September had turned out to be as vulnerable as any human. His huge frame simply gave him greater depths in which to hide his passions.

With typical lack of formality, the Moulokinese prepared no noisy demonstration to greet the return of the
Slanderscree.
The townsfolk went about their everyday business and the shipwrights who’d helped replace wheels with runners returned to their yards. Officially, the sole ceremony consisted of minister Mirmib and two aides meeting them at dockside.

“Landgrave Lady K’ferr Shri-Vehm bids you welcome again to Moulokin, my friends. Our breath is your warmth.

“There will be a feast tonight to celebrate your unexpected but nonetheless welcome return, at which time you may further enlarge on this wondrous history you have made for us.”

“Wondrous isn’t the word,” Ethan addressed the minister. “Significant would be better. Among other things, it shows that your new confederation isn’t as far-fetched as we first thought, because all Tran once lived within a far stronger union.”

“A union repeatedly scattered by weather stranger than I can believe, or so go the rumors our shipwrights have told me,” Mirmib replied.

As it developed, the feast of the night extended in various incarnations for several days, during which time the crew enjoyed the hospitality of Moulokin. Their tales engendered considerable, lively speculation and discussion among the townspeople. Some of the stories lined up neatly with local religions, which grew at once stronger for the confirmation and weaker for the reality of it.

When it was adjudged time for the
Slanderscree
to embark on its circuitous return to Arsudun, the Moulokinese finally abandoned their casual reserve. They took leave of their work to crowd around the harbor and voice enthusiastic, spontaneous wishes for the safe journey and good wind of their new friends and allies. With the last shouts of the watch patrolling the outer gate adding to the wind pouring down the canyon, the icerigger raced out onto the frozen sea.