T
HE OLD woman rose. Two attendants came forward to support her, and with their aid she walked down the spiral stairs and away into the shadows below.
The man with the spear stepped forward from among those who had remained behind.
“You have your name,” he said to Jens. “Now you go.”
Jens tucked the ID card into his pocket and stood up. His head spun a little from all the smoke he had taken in over the past few hours.
“We go,” he agreed. He looked at the others in his party: Faral, Miza, and the man in black. He felt somewhat resentful that the stranger—for so long his private, invisible companion—had chosen this occasion to make himself seen and heard by all comers. “Are we ready?”
“We’re ready,” said Faral.
He stood, and held out a hand to help Miza to her feet. She didn’t need any help that Jens could see—she’d already proved herself to be quick and limber during their adventures on Ophel—but she took Faral’s hand anyway. She blinked a little, as if trying to clear the smoke out of her eyes.
“Captain Amaro was right,” she said somewhat fuzzily. “We really did need a portable power source to get our visas.”
“Cheap at the price,” said Faral. He turned to the man in black. “You said you could help us find passage to Khesat on a different ship. Are we talking about the one you came here in?”
“No. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Faral scowled. “Not a good—who
are
you, anyway?” “One name is Guislen,” the man said after a moment.
*Guislen,* said Faral in Trade-talk. *It sounds a lot like an alias to me. Jens—foster-brother—are you seriously proposing that we trust this guy? We don’t even know who he really is.*
*I’m pretty sure that Guislen isn’t his name, but I’ve seen him around before.*
Faral shrugged. “It’s your decision—you’re the one who’s calling the dance. Miza and I are just here for the show.”
Jens looked from his cousin to Gentlesir Huool’s redheaded intern. “Then I say we trust him,” he said.
He turned to the man whose real name was probably not Guislen. “You said you could find us a ship. Let’s go.”
Guislen led the way out of the rotunda and back down the hall to the main staircase. The great building was empty now; the men and women who had guarded the long corridor were gone, and only the lit glowcubes remained to show where they had stood.
The atrium was dark and full of shadows. The planet’s small, fast-moving moon shone down through the skylight, making odd-shaped patches of illumination on the hanging metal slabs and the crystal floor. Jens wished that the sheets of metal wouldn’t brush and slide against each other so much; their faint, musical sound was too much like voices whispering all around him in the dark.
He was glad when they passed through the atrium and out onto the grassy plain. The sky overhead was clear, and outside the building the moonlight cast sharper, blacker shadows than it had within. The forest was a deeper darkness ahead of them at the far edge of the plain.
“Which way is the ship?” Jens asked.
Guislen pointed at the forest. “That way.”
“Are you talking about another trading ship like the
Dusty
?” Faral demanded. “Or one of those wrecks out there in the jungle?”
“Not a wreck,” said Guislen. “An antique, in good condition. And one of you knows how to handle such things.”
“Pleasure craft, limited,” Miza said hastily. “That’s not the same as knowing how to operate a commercial starship.”
“It will be enough,” Guislen told her. “I can help you with the hard parts.”
Miza didn’t look reassured, and Jens didn’t blame her. She was still frowning when they reached the forest. After that, the darkness around them was too deep for her expression to matter. Only the occasional shaft of moonlight came down through the tangle of vines and tree branches to illuminate their way. The forest had a nighttime smell to it that was different from the scent it had by day—a sweeter, heavier smell, almost the sweetness of decay, as if some carrion-fed flower had opened its blossoms with the coming of night.
They had been walking for some time when Faral said, in a low tone, “Someone’s following us.”
“You’re sure?” Miza’s voice was commendably level, Jens thought, but she moved, almost involuntarily, a little closer to his cousin as she spoke.
“I wouldn’t have said so if I wasn’t,” Faral said.
Jens pulled out the blaster he had tucked in his waistband. He’d carried the stolen weapon this far without incident—unless you counted target-firing it during the dull parts of the transit from Ophel—but now he felt better for having it ready.
“You can trust Faral,” he said to Miza. “He’s good at that sort of thing.”
Guislen said only, “We have to hurry,” and quickened his pace. “I fear …”
“Fear what?” asked Miza. She got no reply.
At last they came to a part of the forest where the moonlight filtered down through the leaves to reveal a single isolated spaceship. The vessel was small, and covered with a thick mat of vines and creepers, but it stood balanced on its landing legs with its nose pointed high. Its doors were sealed shut at the top of a roll away ramp.
“We won’t need nullgravs to lift this one,” Guislen said. “She’s a Gyfferan Class Elevener—one of the old straight-up designs.”
“Someone’s standing beside the ramp,” Jens said.
But the dim figure, glimpsed only for a moment, had vanished again into the shadows before he finished speaking.
Faral said, “I don’t see anyone.”
Jens shook his head to clear it. “I must be seeing things. It’s not there now.” He gave an unsteady laugh. “What do you suppose we were breathing, back there at the passport office?”
“Strong stuff,” Miza said. “I’m not surprised that the Mages trade here for medicinals, if that’s what a bunch of backslid primitives can do with the local resources.”
“Not all that primitive,” Faral said. “They’ve got a good racket going in the passport-and-ID business. All the imported technology they want, no questions asked … I think we got some kind of special treatment.”
“We’re wasting time,” said Guislen. “It isn’t safe to delay outside here much longer.”
“All right, but how do we get in?” Faral eyed the grounded spacecraft. “Violence is out if we want the thing to be airtight afterward. Assuming that it’s airtight now.”
Jens became aware that the others were watching him expectantly—even Guislen, which disturbed him somewhat. For some reason, it had become his responsibility to take the next step, whatever it was. He looked at the ship. Nothing new came out of the dark between the trees to stand in the patchy moonlight beside the landing legs. One beam of pale silver-grey, coming down unbroken through the leaves overhead, touched the ramp like a pointer.
I don’t want to do this,
Jens thought. But he was already walking up the ramp, breaking away a tangled net of vines and branches as he did so. His boots rang out on the slanted metal, sounding unnaturally loud and drumlike in the quiet of the forest.
There was a lockplate beside the sealed door at the top of the ramp—an old-fashioned model, square and bulky. He wondered if the standby power had trickled away in the years since the Biochem Plagues.
Nothing for it but to try,
he thought, and laid his hand against the scanner. Maybe it was the lingering residue of the Sapnish incense affecting his perceptions, but it seemed to him that he could feel the circuitry inside, waiting for the proper touch to open it.
But his touch wasn’t the one that the silent circuits required. He was aware, without quite knowing how, that the door had tested him and found him wanting.
“Some things require practice,” Guislen said. He was standing beside Jens, and so quiet had been his approach, or so intent had Jens been on the door, that Jens had been unaware that he was coming. “Let me see what I can do.”
Guislen laid his hand beside Jens’s on the scanner. Jens felt again the flow of electrons in their concealed ways—but this time they clicked the circuits over, accepting the new directions in which they had been sent.
“There’s a trick to it,” Guislen said, “and if you have the knack it’s easy. I can show you later.”
A red light glowed briefly within the depths of the scanner as the door came to life and began to cycle. Clinging tendrils of vine tore free as the door sighed open, its smooth, corrosionless metal withdrawing into slots on either side of the hatch.
“Permasteel construction throughout,” said Guislen. “The Eleveners were tough little ships.”
Jens didn’t answer. A wave of foul air had come cascading out as the door opened, making his gorge rise and his head spin. Choking, he retreated down the ramp.
“Good job,” Faral said as Jens staggered up to him. “If that works, maybe the rest of it—hey, what’s the matter with you?”
“I feel wretched,” Jens said. He sat down abruptly on the ground and let his head hang in between his knees while he willed his queasiness to subside.
“Don’t feel wretched for any longer than you can help.” That was Miza, sounding scared. “Because there’s a light moving out in the woods. It’s hanging away from us, but it’s there. I’ve been catching it out of the side of my eye.”
“Could be one of our friends from the port-control building,” Faral said. “I think they were the ones who were following us.”
“Maybe they just wanted us to open a ship so they could loot it,” Miza said.
“No,” Jens said. He pushed himself up onto his feet. “It isn’t the locals. None of the ships we saw this morning had been touched.”
He looked back at the ship. Guislen was waiting at the top of the ramp by the open door. Jens drew a deep breath of the forest air. Even heavy as it was with the cloying scent of the night-blooming flowers, it was better than what waited for him.
“I’m going aboard,” he said to Miza and Faral. “See what’s there … maybe get the vent system running.” He pulled the blaster out of his waistband and handed it to Faral. “Here. In case I’m wrong about the locals.”
Miza was scrambling inside her belt pouch. After pulling out a coin purse, two flatchips, and a hairbrush, she came up with a small, rattling object—keycards strung on a loop of plastic cord, and along with the keys a miniature glowcube, no bigger than a thumbnail.
“The light’s not good for much except finding lockslots in the dark,” she said. “But you’ll need something to see by once you’re inside.”
“Thanks,” Jens said. There didn’t seem to be much else left to talk about, and there was no point in waiting. “Be careful,” he added finally, and started back up the ramp into the derelict ship.
The worst of the foul air had dissipated by the time Jens made it back to the top of the ramp. Only a faint, persistent trace remained, an underlying staleness and corruption that was almost more a taste in the back of the mouth than a smell.
Guislen was waiting for him. “Come. Let’s see what this ship has for us.”
Together they went through the open door, with Guislen a little in the lead. Inside the ship, everything was black; the light from outside extended only a few feet beyond the threshold. Jens fumbled with Miza’s key loop until he found the activation stud on the miniature glowcube, and pressed it with his fingernail. The cube flickered into a pallid life—it was an old one, and weak to boot—and the interior of the derelict Gyfferan Elevener saw light for the first time since the plague days.
Reflections danced back at him from deck and bulkheads. The Elevener was bright permasteel within as well as without, and whoever her masters had been they had kept her in good order.
“A trim little ship,” said Guislen. “A bit short on cargo space for some people’s taste, but that shouldn’t matter.”
Jens turned toward his companion. At first glance he thought that Guislen was holding up a glowcube like his own, only larger and brighter than Miza’s key loop pendant. Then he saw that Guislen held nothing at all in his upraised hand except for the light itself, pure white and apparently sourceless.
“You’re an Adept, aren’t you?” Jens said finally.
“Yes,” Guislen replied after a moment. “I was an Adept once. I suppose that I still am one, of a sort.”
“If you’re an Adept, what happened to your staff? I remember you having one before, when I was young.”
“I gave it away,” said Guislen, “to someone who needed it more than I did. And after that I followed other paths.”
“Which led you here.”
Guislen smiled. “Yes—and now that we
are
here, we should see what the rest of the ship holds for us.”
He led the way forward and up into the body of the ship by interior ladders, taking the steep metal rungs nimbly like a man accustomed to shipboard life, with the brilliant immaterial light following him obediently all the while. They climbed past the realspace engines and the hyperdrives, and up into what Jens supposed would be the engine control room. Unlit monitors and blank readouts filled the gleaming steel walls, along with dials and gauges of antique design.