BenRabi started to push into his cabin, still glaring at the
Sangaree woman.
“I should’ve bent her on The Broken Wings,”
Mouse snarled. “You
should’ve . . . ” He had not
forgiven Moyshe the weakness that had left her alive.
“I can’t stomach contingency assassinations,
Mouse.”
“Yeah? Look over there and think about it some more. How
much mischief could she do?”
“All right. So it makes a perverted kind of sense. If you
figure a ghost like The Broken Wings will come back to haunt
you.”
“It will. It always does. Maybe I’ll settle this
up . . . ”
BenRabi shook his head. “Not here. Not now. Not after what
we just went through.”
“I didn’t mean right now. I’m not a fool,
Moyshe. It would look like an accident.”
“Let it be, Mouse.”
There was no compassion in Mouse. I should be flint too, benRabi
thought. But I don’t have his knack for hating.
BenRabi found the things and people in his life too transient
for more than mild aversion.
“She’d better move fast when we hit dirt again,
then.” Mouse growled. “One getaway is all she
gets . . . I hope we find Homeworld before I
check out.”
BenRabi felt a twinge of jealousy. Mouse knew the nature of his
Grail. His feet were set inalterably on the path that led to it,
though it was a cup of blood.
“For your sake, I hope so.” Moyshe laughed softly,
bitterly. Sometimes he had to, or scream. “See you
later.” He pushed into his cabin.
He hoped their year cooped up here would soften Mouse, but
feared there was no hope. Marya would not let time work. Memories
of her children would lead her on . . .
Mouse’s hate was old and strong, and deeper than
Confederation culture usually ingrained. If he were indeed a Storm,
that would explain it. The Storms of the Iron Legion had had an
old-fashioned, Biblical way of looking at things.
Sangaree manipulations, during the war in the Shadowline, had
destroyed the family.
But Mouse did not have to be a Storm. His hatred could be
stardust-related.
“The joy that burns, the dream that kills,”
Czyzewski had called the drug only seconds before his own addiction
had carried him into the big, endless dream of death. The drug was
the leading plague of the age, and had touched virtually every
human being. It had taken more lives than had the bitter Ulantonid
War.
Stardust was the pusher’s dream. It was immediately
addictive. One flight and the user was hooked forever. An addict
could not taper off. Neither could he withdraw cold. Nor could he
substitute another, less fearsome drug in its place.
For the poor Inner Worlder addiction ended hard: by suicide, by
being slain while trying to steal enough to finance another fix, or
by finding death in the constant dogfighting among have and
have-not addicts. And many times the end came slowly, screamingly,
in an institution where the warders could do nothing but watch,
protect the world by keeping the addict restrained, and try to
develop hearts of stone.
The sordid facts of stardust addiction tickled the Sangaree
conscience not at all. They had a product to market, a stellar to
turn.
They were not innately cruel. They simply did not see humans as
anything but animals to be exploited. Do the cattleman, butcher,
and customer consider themselves cruel to the beef animal? Sangaree
thought their customers better than cattle. More like what
Renaissance Europeans thought of black Africans. Semi-intelligent
apes.
BenRabi lay on his bunk and wondered about his partner. Mouse
claimed his assignments were all counter-Sangaree. To date they had
been, and Mouse had prosecuted them with a savage zeal, with cruel
little touches, like the injection of Marya’s children. But
what was he doing here, now, working against the Starfishers? That
did not compute.
Following the announcement of von Drachau’s raid, Mouse
had been in the clouds, as if he were a skying addict himself.
The Sangaree were the demons of the Confederation era. They
passed as human easily. Their Homeworld lay somewhere outside The
Arm. Compared to humanity, they were few in number. It was rumored
that they could breed only under their native sun.
The Sangaree produced little for themselves. They preferred
instead to raid, to deal in drugs and slaves and guns.
Confederation resented them bitterly. Man was their prime
victim. The nonhuman races considered them merely a nuisance.
Someone softly knocked on Moyshe’s door. “Come
in,” he said. “Mouse. Thought it was you.” It was
the first he had seen Mouse since Kindervoort’s
inquisition.
“The word’s around,” Mouse told him
“They’ve all decided that we’re evil, mean,
bad, wicked, nasty, crude, rude, and unattractive spies.” He
laughed.
“The Sangaree woman passed the word, I suppose.”
“Maybe. Why don’t you slide out there and see
what’s going on? It’s good for a laugh. Hell,
you’d think we were as rare as dodos and smelled like
skunks.”
“Don’t we? Morally?”
“Ahh . . . Moyshe. What the hell is it
with you these days? Hey! You should see the competition laughing
up their sleeves. But we get the last laugh. They’re on their
way. Kindervoort’s troops snatched a couple beekies this
morning. Same way he got us. Knew they were coming. Looks like he
knew about everybody, except Strehltsweiter.”
“Mouse, they’ve got to have a mole in Luna Command.
Somebody deep.”
“That’s what I figure. It’s the only answer
that adds up. Moyshe, you should see the kids with their holy
attitudes. Like they think they’re a plane above us. Poor
innocents.” Mouse smiled at a memory. “You know that
Williams girl? I shocked the hell out of her. Asked her her price.
She missed the point. That’s real innocence.”
“Ah, youth. Mouse, what happened to our innocence and
idealism? Remember how it was in Academy? We were going to save the
universe.”
“Somebody found our price.” He frowned, dropped onto
the spare bunk. “That’s not really true. We’re
doing it, you know. It’s just that the mechanics of it
aren’t what we thought they’d be. We didn’t
understand that everything has to be a trade-off, that whenever we
changed things to what we thought they should be, we had to do it
at somebody else’s expense . . . Hell,
you’ve got me doing it.”
“What?”
“Thinking. Moyshe, what’s happening with you? You
always were a moody guy, but I’ve never seen you like
you’ve been lately. Ever since we left
Carson’s . . . ”
BenRabi’s defenses stood to arms. He did not dare open up.
Two reasons: you just did not do that these days, and he was not
sure what was happening himself. So he masked the shadowed walls of
Festung Selbst behind a half-truth.
“I’m just depressed. Maybe because I didn’t
get my vacation. Maybe because of
Mother . . . I had a bag full of things I
wanted to take home. Some stamps and coins I picked up in
Corporation Zone. Some stuff I managed to get back from The Broken
Wings. This beautiful hand-carved bone trivet from Tregorgarth, and
some New Earth butterflies that would be worth, a mint anywhere
else . . . ”
“Bullroar, my friend. Bullroar.” Mouse peered at him
from beneath lowered brows. “I’m getting to know you,
Moyshe benRabi. I can tell when something’s got you by the
guts. You better do something. It’ll eat you alive if you
keep it locked up inside.”
Mouse was right about one thing. They were getting to know one
another. Too well. Mouse was reading him now, and wanting to help.
“Maybe. When’s your next chess thing? I’ll come
lose a few games, tip a few brews with the troops.”
Mouse frowned. He knew a light show when he saw one.
Getting too damned close!
Mouse glanced at Jerusalem, at which benRabi had been
scribbling. “Well, I didn’t mean to porlock,
Moyshe.” He rose. “I don’t know if we’ll
have any more tournaments. Kindervoort says we’ll make
Danion sometime tonight. That’s why I came over.
Thought you’d want to know.”
BenRabi brightened. “Hey, good.” He pushed the
Jerusalem papers back, rose, started pacing. “The waiting is
getting to me. A little work . . . ”
The rendezvous with the harvestship was anticlimactic. There
were no brass bands, and no curious crowds at the receiving bay.
The only Seiners around were those who had been sent to show the
landsmen to their quarters and brief them about their job
assignments. No one of any stature came to greet them. Moyshe was
disappointed.
His guide did his work quickly and efficiently and told him,
“You’d better turn in. This is the middle of our night.
I’ll be back early to help walk you through your first
day.”
“Okay. Thanks, Paul.” Moyshe examined the man. Paul
was much like the Seiners he had met before.
The man examined him, too, and struggled with prejudices as he
did so. “Good night, Mr. benRabi.”
“See you in the morning.”
But he did not. Amy showed up instead, and took both benRabi and
Mouse under her wing.
“Keeping an eye on us, eh?” Mouse asked.
She colored slightly. “Yeah. Sort of. Jarl said he wanted
to keep you together so you’d be easier to watch.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed. We
understand.”
“This isn’t my kind of thing, Commander Storm.
I’m a plumber, not a counterspy.”
“Call me Mouse. Please. Or Mr. Iwasaki.”
“Whatever you want. Mouse. Are you ready for
breakfast?” She turned to Moyshe.
“I’m still Moyshe benRabi. All right? Yes. I could
eat three breakfasts.”
Work commenced immediately after tool issue and a brief class in
how to find one’s way around the harvestship. It never let
up.
Moyshe forgot his screaming need in the pressure of the
following week’s labors. The memories that had been gnawing
the underbelly of his soul vanished from consciousness. He flew
easy, not thinking, not observing, not questioning. He stayed too
busy or too tired. The Seiners were true to their promise to work
the landsmen hard.
The mind-quirk he thought of as the image of the gun bothered
him some, but only mildly, as he wandered through daydreams while
replacing wrecked piping or damaged flow meters. He seized the
vision, played with it, wrapped a few extended daydreams around it.
It helped pass the time.
Kept busy, he began to enjoy life again.
“Something strange is going on here, Mouse,” he
whispered once when Amy was out of hearing.
“What’s that?”
“This ship isn’t hurt as bad as they want us to
think. Look around.”
“I couldn’t tell. I never did any time in the line.
All I know about ships is you get on, and after a while you get
back off someplace else.”
“What it amounts to is, there’s a lot of damage, but
nothing that would put something this size out of action. They
could’ve handled it themselves. Just might have taken them a
couple of years.”
“So?”
“So, maybe we’re here for some other reason. My
intuition has been sniffing around that ever since
Carson’s.”
“Why would they bring outsiders in if they didn’t
absolutely have to?”
“I don’t know. The only reason you overstaff a ship
is so you have personnel redundancy in case you take battle
casualties. But on a ship this big two hundred people, or even a
thousand, don’t mean a thing. And who would the Seiners
fight? Confederation? Not with a bunch of fifth columnists
aboard.”
“Give it time. It’ll come to the top. No matter what
they hope, they can’t keep everything hidden
forever.”
“Can it. Amy’s coming.” Curious, he thought.
Mouse did not seem interested in Starfisher motives at all.
BenRabi’s first week did have its rough edges. Every
encounter with the Sangaree woman became a crisis. And she could
not be avoided. Her team, repairing air ducting, was working the
same service passages as his.
She would not leave Mouse alone. And the certainty of purpose
which made Mouse’s responses predictable taunted benRabi with
worries about his own incompleteness.
She did not bait him. She knew that he would do nothing but look
at her soulfully, reflecting the pain-giving back at her.
She appeared from a cross-passage only seconds behind Amy.
“Damn!” Moyshe swore. “Her again.”
“Restrain me, Moyshe.”
“You got it, partner. Be my ass in the fire,
too.”
“Well, the Rat again.” The Sangaree woman stood with
her hands on her hips, defying him to act. Backing her were several
idealistic youngsters. She had sold them a simpleminded anti-spy
package. “What an unpleasant surprise. Butchered anyone
lately, spy? There’re lots of non-Confies aboard. You ought
to be as happy as a hog knee-deep in slop.”
A curious metaphor, benRabi thought. She must have chosen it
especially for the Tregorgarthian kids.
The youths looked at one another, embarrassed. They shared her
views, and were a rather rude bunch themselves, but their society
had taught them that too much bluntness could get a person killed.
Tregorgarth was a rough world.
“You could start with me. You know what I think about your
fascist military dictatorship. Or don’t you have the
guts?”
She knew damned well that he had, but assumed that he would not
respond in front of witnesses—or that she could take him if
he did. She was fooling herself there, benRabi thought. She
believed Mouse strictly a strike-from-behind man. He was a lot
more. Two decades of training and several thousand years of combat
experience had gone into making him the perfect organic killing
machine.
Moyshe did not know of a weapon, or a system of close combat,
that Mouse did not know as well as any man who had ever lived.
Short of pulling guns, there was little she and her whole crowd
could have done were he to lose his temper.
BenRabi could sense the aching in Mouse, could feel
Mouse’s need to show her. But his partner controlled himself.
That, too, had been part of his training.
BenRabi had to exercise some self-control himself. The
woman’s behavior had eroded his compassion.
She was playing a more dangerous game than she suspected. It
would backfire on her if she did not ease up.
BenRabi was sure the woman was working to some carefully
prepared plan. Her acting had not improved. Her easy confidence
betrayed.
But she was vulnerable. Her Achilles Heel was her hatred.
BenRabi was sure Mouse would exploit
it . . .
“Miss Gonzalez,” Amy said. “If you’re
quite finished? We have work to do. And I suggest you return to
yours before there’s cause for an inquiry into the absence of
your supervisor.”
The Sangaree woman backed down. She was not ready to jeopardize
her mission.
“I feel like a fool,” benRabi muttered.
Eyes downcast, Mouse said, “So do I. I can’t take it
forever, Moyshe.”
Then Amy told them, “I’m glad you restrained
yourselves. Things are ugly enough without our getting
physical.”
She intrigued benRabi. He watched her a lot when she was not
looking. He was glad she did not go for chest-pounders. He was not
the type, and in the back of his mind he had begun formulating
designs upon her.
Over a flow chart thick with black X’s indicating trouble
spots, while Amy was off requisitioning a special wrench, Mouse
muttered, “It’s getting hard, Moyshe. I know what
she’s doing, but . . . She’s trying
to make us take ourselves out of the play.”
“Hang on.”
“One of these nights . . . ”
Indefatigable Mouse. When benRabi finished work he had barely
enough energy to eat, then tumble into bed. But Mouse got out and
mingled, made new acquaintances (mostly female), and found new
interests. He sponged up every bit of information that crossed his
path.
His latest thing was the Middle American football popular with
Seiners. They had arrived just in time for the pre-season
excitement. His interest gave him an excuse to move around.
Moyshe was afraid. Having established his pattern of mobility,
Mouse might arrange a fatal encounter with Marya somewhere far from
the usual groundling stomping ground.
Moyshe wondered if he should catch her alone and try to make her
understand.
He remembered The Broken Wings.
He was her primary target. She was trying to get at him through
Mouse. The hurt he had done her was more personal, more
ego-slashing than what Mouse had done. By her reasoning, what had
happened to the children could be laid at his doorstep. He could
have prevented it.
He would have to watch his back. Mouse was not the only one who
could arrange an accident.
“Is she alone?” Mouse asked. “They like lots
of backup.”
“I haven’t spotted anybody yet. They could be
playing it close. What I want to know is, why is she here?
Everybody else has tried something. But she just keeps on being
obnoxious.”
“She’s waiting.”
“For what?”
Mouse shrugged. “We’ll find out the hard way, I
guess.”
“Here’s a notion,” Moyshe said. “It just
came to me. A way to warn her.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow’s recreation day, right?” They had
been promised one day off a week. This would be the first.
“And?”
“Those kids. You know how Tregorgarthians are.
They’re challenging everybody to meet them in a martial arts
elimination tournament. Think you could manage them? Without
hurting anybody?”
Mouse thought. “I don’t know if I can pull the
punches anymore.”
“It would be good for the boys, too.”
Tregorgarthians away from home tended to become bullies. Their
homeworld schooled them to believe that those who did not fight at
the drop of a hat were cowards. Smacked around a little, they
civilized fast.
“Might give them second thoughts about letting her suck
them in,” benRabi mused. “They’ve got to know
she’s up to something.”
“They’d back off if they knew I was dangerous,
eh?”
“I’m hoping. Sex seems to be her main hold on them.
I see one sneaking out of her room almost every morning.”
“Who’s sneaking out of whose cabin?”
Amy had returned. “Just gossiping,” Moyshe replied.
“One of the girls has an assembly line going.”
She bit. “Landsmen! They’re right about you being
immoral.”
Moyshe forbore observing that the Seiners seemed to be just as
loose as his own people. Amy’s priggishness was personal, not
cultural. She was the only Starfisher he knew who talked that
morality nonsense.
Mouse did not forbear. “When did you lose yours, Miss
Morality?”
“Huh? My what?”
“Your cherry. You’re no more pure than Old Earth
air.”
She sputtered, reddened, mumbled something about all landsmen
being alike.
“You’re right. Satyrs and nymphs, the lot of
us.” Mouse licked his lips, winked, asked,
“What’re you doing tonight?”
BenRabi grinned. Mouse was teasing her, as he had been all week
long, but she did not realize it. He used a subtler approach when
he really wanted a woman.
Something within her clicked, as it did each time Mouse put her
on the defensive. A different, colder personality surfaced long
enough to carry her past the rough spot. “Sleeping. Alone.
Did you decide where you want to cut that water main?” Then
another quick change of subject. “Oh. Jarl said to tell you
to sharpen your teeth. He’s bringing some people to play you
tomorrow. You too, Moyshe.”
Mouse had become chess champion of Service Ship Three. The
Seiners had been excited about it. They were fond of the game and
eager for new challenges.
“Why me? I’m no good.”
“Better than you think. Anyway, we like everybody to find
their place in the pecking order.” Her hardness faded as
quickly as it had come.
“I wanted to go over to Twenty-three West. If I could get
permission.” He pulled the excuse off the wall, for the
salving of his ego. He did not like losing all the time, even at
games. “I heard there’s a guy over there with some
early English coins. Victorians.”
She looked puzzled.
Mouse laughed. “Didn’t you know? We’re both
mad collectors. Coins and stamps mostly, because they’re easy
to lug around.”
Frowning over them, Amy reminded benRabi of Alyce. So many of
their facial expressions were similar. “It looks like
you’re mad everything. Chess. Archaicism. Collections.
Football and women.”
“That’s him, not me,” benRabi said.
“What about people?” Amy asked.
“Aren’t women people?” Mouse countered.
She shook her head. She was a Starfisher, and Starfishers could
not understand. Even Archaicism was just a hobby for them. Landsmen
plunged themselves into things because they did not want to get
involved with people. People hurt. The growing closeness between
Mouse and benRabi, and the apparent friendships that had taken
shape among the other foreigners, had confused Amy. She did not
recognize their lack of temporal depth.
A critical difference between Confederation and Starfisher
relationships was that of durational expectancy. The idea of a
close relationship that could be severed quickly, painlessly, as
easily as it had been formed, would not occur to a Starfisher. But
they lived in a closed, static culture where a severely limited
number of people passed through their lives. Friendships were
expected to last a lifetime.
BenRabi was leery of the morrow. The isolation of the landsmen,
far out in a remote residential cube, had minimized cultural
friction during the week. But Kindervoort, for whom the outsiders
had become a pet project, planned to make recreation day a gigantic
college smoker, with floods of Seiners being exposed to landside
ways.
Still trying to gentle everyone in, Moyshe supposed. Kindervoort
was a rather thoughtful, admirable cop. He might get to like the
man yet.
BenRabi started to push into his cabin, still glaring at the
Sangaree woman.
“I should’ve bent her on The Broken Wings,”
Mouse snarled. “You
should’ve . . . ” He had not
forgiven Moyshe the weakness that had left her alive.
“I can’t stomach contingency assassinations,
Mouse.”
“Yeah? Look over there and think about it some more. How
much mischief could she do?”
“All right. So it makes a perverted kind of sense. If you
figure a ghost like The Broken Wings will come back to haunt
you.”
“It will. It always does. Maybe I’ll settle this
up . . . ”
BenRabi shook his head. “Not here. Not now. Not after what
we just went through.”
“I didn’t mean right now. I’m not a fool,
Moyshe. It would look like an accident.”
“Let it be, Mouse.”
There was no compassion in Mouse. I should be flint too, benRabi
thought. But I don’t have his knack for hating.
BenRabi found the things and people in his life too transient
for more than mild aversion.
“She’d better move fast when we hit dirt again,
then.” Mouse growled. “One getaway is all she
gets . . . I hope we find Homeworld before I
check out.”
BenRabi felt a twinge of jealousy. Mouse knew the nature of his
Grail. His feet were set inalterably on the path that led to it,
though it was a cup of blood.
“For your sake, I hope so.” Moyshe laughed softly,
bitterly. Sometimes he had to, or scream. “See you
later.” He pushed into his cabin.
He hoped their year cooped up here would soften Mouse, but
feared there was no hope. Marya would not let time work. Memories
of her children would lead her on . . .
Mouse’s hate was old and strong, and deeper than
Confederation culture usually ingrained. If he were indeed a Storm,
that would explain it. The Storms of the Iron Legion had had an
old-fashioned, Biblical way of looking at things.
Sangaree manipulations, during the war in the Shadowline, had
destroyed the family.
But Mouse did not have to be a Storm. His hatred could be
stardust-related.
“The joy that burns, the dream that kills,”
Czyzewski had called the drug only seconds before his own addiction
had carried him into the big, endless dream of death. The drug was
the leading plague of the age, and had touched virtually every
human being. It had taken more lives than had the bitter Ulantonid
War.
Stardust was the pusher’s dream. It was immediately
addictive. One flight and the user was hooked forever. An addict
could not taper off. Neither could he withdraw cold. Nor could he
substitute another, less fearsome drug in its place.
For the poor Inner Worlder addiction ended hard: by suicide, by
being slain while trying to steal enough to finance another fix, or
by finding death in the constant dogfighting among have and
have-not addicts. And many times the end came slowly, screamingly,
in an institution where the warders could do nothing but watch,
protect the world by keeping the addict restrained, and try to
develop hearts of stone.
The sordid facts of stardust addiction tickled the Sangaree
conscience not at all. They had a product to market, a stellar to
turn.
They were not innately cruel. They simply did not see humans as
anything but animals to be exploited. Do the cattleman, butcher,
and customer consider themselves cruel to the beef animal? Sangaree
thought their customers better than cattle. More like what
Renaissance Europeans thought of black Africans. Semi-intelligent
apes.
BenRabi lay on his bunk and wondered about his partner. Mouse
claimed his assignments were all counter-Sangaree. To date they had
been, and Mouse had prosecuted them with a savage zeal, with cruel
little touches, like the injection of Marya’s children. But
what was he doing here, now, working against the Starfishers? That
did not compute.
Following the announcement of von Drachau’s raid, Mouse
had been in the clouds, as if he were a skying addict himself.
The Sangaree were the demons of the Confederation era. They
passed as human easily. Their Homeworld lay somewhere outside The
Arm. Compared to humanity, they were few in number. It was rumored
that they could breed only under their native sun.
The Sangaree produced little for themselves. They preferred
instead to raid, to deal in drugs and slaves and guns.
Confederation resented them bitterly. Man was their prime
victim. The nonhuman races considered them merely a nuisance.
Someone softly knocked on Moyshe’s door. “Come
in,” he said. “Mouse. Thought it was you.” It was
the first he had seen Mouse since Kindervoort’s
inquisition.
“The word’s around,” Mouse told him
“They’ve all decided that we’re evil, mean,
bad, wicked, nasty, crude, rude, and unattractive spies.” He
laughed.
“The Sangaree woman passed the word, I suppose.”
“Maybe. Why don’t you slide out there and see
what’s going on? It’s good for a laugh. Hell,
you’d think we were as rare as dodos and smelled like
skunks.”
“Don’t we? Morally?”
“Ahh . . . Moyshe. What the hell is it
with you these days? Hey! You should see the competition laughing
up their sleeves. But we get the last laugh. They’re on their
way. Kindervoort’s troops snatched a couple beekies this
morning. Same way he got us. Knew they were coming. Looks like he
knew about everybody, except Strehltsweiter.”
“Mouse, they’ve got to have a mole in Luna Command.
Somebody deep.”
“That’s what I figure. It’s the only answer
that adds up. Moyshe, you should see the kids with their holy
attitudes. Like they think they’re a plane above us. Poor
innocents.” Mouse smiled at a memory. “You know that
Williams girl? I shocked the hell out of her. Asked her her price.
She missed the point. That’s real innocence.”
“Ah, youth. Mouse, what happened to our innocence and
idealism? Remember how it was in Academy? We were going to save the
universe.”
“Somebody found our price.” He frowned, dropped onto
the spare bunk. “That’s not really true. We’re
doing it, you know. It’s just that the mechanics of it
aren’t what we thought they’d be. We didn’t
understand that everything has to be a trade-off, that whenever we
changed things to what we thought they should be, we had to do it
at somebody else’s expense . . . Hell,
you’ve got me doing it.”
“What?”
“Thinking. Moyshe, what’s happening with you? You
always were a moody guy, but I’ve never seen you like
you’ve been lately. Ever since we left
Carson’s . . . ”
BenRabi’s defenses stood to arms. He did not dare open up.
Two reasons: you just did not do that these days, and he was not
sure what was happening himself. So he masked the shadowed walls of
Festung Selbst behind a half-truth.
“I’m just depressed. Maybe because I didn’t
get my vacation. Maybe because of
Mother . . . I had a bag full of things I
wanted to take home. Some stamps and coins I picked up in
Corporation Zone. Some stuff I managed to get back from The Broken
Wings. This beautiful hand-carved bone trivet from Tregorgarth, and
some New Earth butterflies that would be worth, a mint anywhere
else . . . ”
“Bullroar, my friend. Bullroar.” Mouse peered at him
from beneath lowered brows. “I’m getting to know you,
Moyshe benRabi. I can tell when something’s got you by the
guts. You better do something. It’ll eat you alive if you
keep it locked up inside.”
Mouse was right about one thing. They were getting to know one
another. Too well. Mouse was reading him now, and wanting to help.
“Maybe. When’s your next chess thing? I’ll come
lose a few games, tip a few brews with the troops.”
Mouse frowned. He knew a light show when he saw one.
Getting too damned close!
Mouse glanced at Jerusalem, at which benRabi had been
scribbling. “Well, I didn’t mean to porlock,
Moyshe.” He rose. “I don’t know if we’ll
have any more tournaments. Kindervoort says we’ll make
Danion sometime tonight. That’s why I came over.
Thought you’d want to know.”
BenRabi brightened. “Hey, good.” He pushed the
Jerusalem papers back, rose, started pacing. “The waiting is
getting to me. A little work . . . ”
The rendezvous with the harvestship was anticlimactic. There
were no brass bands, and no curious crowds at the receiving bay.
The only Seiners around were those who had been sent to show the
landsmen to their quarters and brief them about their job
assignments. No one of any stature came to greet them. Moyshe was
disappointed.
His guide did his work quickly and efficiently and told him,
“You’d better turn in. This is the middle of our night.
I’ll be back early to help walk you through your first
day.”
“Okay. Thanks, Paul.” Moyshe examined the man. Paul
was much like the Seiners he had met before.
The man examined him, too, and struggled with prejudices as he
did so. “Good night, Mr. benRabi.”
“See you in the morning.”
But he did not. Amy showed up instead, and took both benRabi and
Mouse under her wing.
“Keeping an eye on us, eh?” Mouse asked.
She colored slightly. “Yeah. Sort of. Jarl said he wanted
to keep you together so you’d be easier to watch.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed. We
understand.”
“This isn’t my kind of thing, Commander Storm.
I’m a plumber, not a counterspy.”
“Call me Mouse. Please. Or Mr. Iwasaki.”
“Whatever you want. Mouse. Are you ready for
breakfast?” She turned to Moyshe.
“I’m still Moyshe benRabi. All right? Yes. I could
eat three breakfasts.”
Work commenced immediately after tool issue and a brief class in
how to find one’s way around the harvestship. It never let
up.
Moyshe forgot his screaming need in the pressure of the
following week’s labors. The memories that had been gnawing
the underbelly of his soul vanished from consciousness. He flew
easy, not thinking, not observing, not questioning. He stayed too
busy or too tired. The Seiners were true to their promise to work
the landsmen hard.
The mind-quirk he thought of as the image of the gun bothered
him some, but only mildly, as he wandered through daydreams while
replacing wrecked piping or damaged flow meters. He seized the
vision, played with it, wrapped a few extended daydreams around it.
It helped pass the time.
Kept busy, he began to enjoy life again.
“Something strange is going on here, Mouse,” he
whispered once when Amy was out of hearing.
“What’s that?”
“This ship isn’t hurt as bad as they want us to
think. Look around.”
“I couldn’t tell. I never did any time in the line.
All I know about ships is you get on, and after a while you get
back off someplace else.”
“What it amounts to is, there’s a lot of damage, but
nothing that would put something this size out of action. They
could’ve handled it themselves. Just might have taken them a
couple of years.”
“So?”
“So, maybe we’re here for some other reason. My
intuition has been sniffing around that ever since
Carson’s.”
“Why would they bring outsiders in if they didn’t
absolutely have to?”
“I don’t know. The only reason you overstaff a ship
is so you have personnel redundancy in case you take battle
casualties. But on a ship this big two hundred people, or even a
thousand, don’t mean a thing. And who would the Seiners
fight? Confederation? Not with a bunch of fifth columnists
aboard.”
“Give it time. It’ll come to the top. No matter what
they hope, they can’t keep everything hidden
forever.”
“Can it. Amy’s coming.” Curious, he thought.
Mouse did not seem interested in Starfisher motives at all.
BenRabi’s first week did have its rough edges. Every
encounter with the Sangaree woman became a crisis. And she could
not be avoided. Her team, repairing air ducting, was working the
same service passages as his.
She would not leave Mouse alone. And the certainty of purpose
which made Mouse’s responses predictable taunted benRabi with
worries about his own incompleteness.
She did not bait him. She knew that he would do nothing but look
at her soulfully, reflecting the pain-giving back at her.
She appeared from a cross-passage only seconds behind Amy.
“Damn!” Moyshe swore. “Her again.”
“Restrain me, Moyshe.”
“You got it, partner. Be my ass in the fire,
too.”
“Well, the Rat again.” The Sangaree woman stood with
her hands on her hips, defying him to act. Backing her were several
idealistic youngsters. She had sold them a simpleminded anti-spy
package. “What an unpleasant surprise. Butchered anyone
lately, spy? There’re lots of non-Confies aboard. You ought
to be as happy as a hog knee-deep in slop.”
A curious metaphor, benRabi thought. She must have chosen it
especially for the Tregorgarthian kids.
The youths looked at one another, embarrassed. They shared her
views, and were a rather rude bunch themselves, but their society
had taught them that too much bluntness could get a person killed.
Tregorgarth was a rough world.
“You could start with me. You know what I think about your
fascist military dictatorship. Or don’t you have the
guts?”
She knew damned well that he had, but assumed that he would not
respond in front of witnesses—or that she could take him if
he did. She was fooling herself there, benRabi thought. She
believed Mouse strictly a strike-from-behind man. He was a lot
more. Two decades of training and several thousand years of combat
experience had gone into making him the perfect organic killing
machine.
Moyshe did not know of a weapon, or a system of close combat,
that Mouse did not know as well as any man who had ever lived.
Short of pulling guns, there was little she and her whole crowd
could have done were he to lose his temper.
BenRabi could sense the aching in Mouse, could feel
Mouse’s need to show her. But his partner controlled himself.
That, too, had been part of his training.
BenRabi had to exercise some self-control himself. The
woman’s behavior had eroded his compassion.
She was playing a more dangerous game than she suspected. It
would backfire on her if she did not ease up.
BenRabi was sure the woman was working to some carefully
prepared plan. Her acting had not improved. Her easy confidence
betrayed.
But she was vulnerable. Her Achilles Heel was her hatred.
BenRabi was sure Mouse would exploit
it . . .
“Miss Gonzalez,” Amy said. “If you’re
quite finished? We have work to do. And I suggest you return to
yours before there’s cause for an inquiry into the absence of
your supervisor.”
The Sangaree woman backed down. She was not ready to jeopardize
her mission.
“I feel like a fool,” benRabi muttered.
Eyes downcast, Mouse said, “So do I. I can’t take it
forever, Moyshe.”
Then Amy told them, “I’m glad you restrained
yourselves. Things are ugly enough without our getting
physical.”
She intrigued benRabi. He watched her a lot when she was not
looking. He was glad she did not go for chest-pounders. He was not
the type, and in the back of his mind he had begun formulating
designs upon her.
Over a flow chart thick with black X’s indicating trouble
spots, while Amy was off requisitioning a special wrench, Mouse
muttered, “It’s getting hard, Moyshe. I know what
she’s doing, but . . . She’s trying
to make us take ourselves out of the play.”
“Hang on.”
“One of these nights . . . ”
Indefatigable Mouse. When benRabi finished work he had barely
enough energy to eat, then tumble into bed. But Mouse got out and
mingled, made new acquaintances (mostly female), and found new
interests. He sponged up every bit of information that crossed his
path.
His latest thing was the Middle American football popular with
Seiners. They had arrived just in time for the pre-season
excitement. His interest gave him an excuse to move around.
Moyshe was afraid. Having established his pattern of mobility,
Mouse might arrange a fatal encounter with Marya somewhere far from
the usual groundling stomping ground.
Moyshe wondered if he should catch her alone and try to make her
understand.
He remembered The Broken Wings.
He was her primary target. She was trying to get at him through
Mouse. The hurt he had done her was more personal, more
ego-slashing than what Mouse had done. By her reasoning, what had
happened to the children could be laid at his doorstep. He could
have prevented it.
He would have to watch his back. Mouse was not the only one who
could arrange an accident.
“Is she alone?” Mouse asked. “They like lots
of backup.”
“I haven’t spotted anybody yet. They could be
playing it close. What I want to know is, why is she here?
Everybody else has tried something. But she just keeps on being
obnoxious.”
“She’s waiting.”
“For what?”
Mouse shrugged. “We’ll find out the hard way, I
guess.”
“Here’s a notion,” Moyshe said. “It just
came to me. A way to warn her.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow’s recreation day, right?” They had
been promised one day off a week. This would be the first.
“And?”
“Those kids. You know how Tregorgarthians are.
They’re challenging everybody to meet them in a martial arts
elimination tournament. Think you could manage them? Without
hurting anybody?”
Mouse thought. “I don’t know if I can pull the
punches anymore.”
“It would be good for the boys, too.”
Tregorgarthians away from home tended to become bullies. Their
homeworld schooled them to believe that those who did not fight at
the drop of a hat were cowards. Smacked around a little, they
civilized fast.
“Might give them second thoughts about letting her suck
them in,” benRabi mused. “They’ve got to know
she’s up to something.”
“They’d back off if they knew I was dangerous,
eh?”
“I’m hoping. Sex seems to be her main hold on them.
I see one sneaking out of her room almost every morning.”
“Who’s sneaking out of whose cabin?”
Amy had returned. “Just gossiping,” Moyshe replied.
“One of the girls has an assembly line going.”
She bit. “Landsmen! They’re right about you being
immoral.”
Moyshe forbore observing that the Seiners seemed to be just as
loose as his own people. Amy’s priggishness was personal, not
cultural. She was the only Starfisher he knew who talked that
morality nonsense.
Mouse did not forbear. “When did you lose yours, Miss
Morality?”
“Huh? My what?”
“Your cherry. You’re no more pure than Old Earth
air.”
She sputtered, reddened, mumbled something about all landsmen
being alike.
“You’re right. Satyrs and nymphs, the lot of
us.” Mouse licked his lips, winked, asked,
“What’re you doing tonight?”
BenRabi grinned. Mouse was teasing her, as he had been all week
long, but she did not realize it. He used a subtler approach when
he really wanted a woman.
Something within her clicked, as it did each time Mouse put her
on the defensive. A different, colder personality surfaced long
enough to carry her past the rough spot. “Sleeping. Alone.
Did you decide where you want to cut that water main?” Then
another quick change of subject. “Oh. Jarl said to tell you
to sharpen your teeth. He’s bringing some people to play you
tomorrow. You too, Moyshe.”
Mouse had become chess champion of Service Ship Three. The
Seiners had been excited about it. They were fond of the game and
eager for new challenges.
“Why me? I’m no good.”
“Better than you think. Anyway, we like everybody to find
their place in the pecking order.” Her hardness faded as
quickly as it had come.
“I wanted to go over to Twenty-three West. If I could get
permission.” He pulled the excuse off the wall, for the
salving of his ego. He did not like losing all the time, even at
games. “I heard there’s a guy over there with some
early English coins. Victorians.”
She looked puzzled.
Mouse laughed. “Didn’t you know? We’re both
mad collectors. Coins and stamps mostly, because they’re easy
to lug around.”
Frowning over them, Amy reminded benRabi of Alyce. So many of
their facial expressions were similar. “It looks like
you’re mad everything. Chess. Archaicism. Collections.
Football and women.”
“That’s him, not me,” benRabi said.
“What about people?” Amy asked.
“Aren’t women people?” Mouse countered.
She shook her head. She was a Starfisher, and Starfishers could
not understand. Even Archaicism was just a hobby for them. Landsmen
plunged themselves into things because they did not want to get
involved with people. People hurt. The growing closeness between
Mouse and benRabi, and the apparent friendships that had taken
shape among the other foreigners, had confused Amy. She did not
recognize their lack of temporal depth.
A critical difference between Confederation and Starfisher
relationships was that of durational expectancy. The idea of a
close relationship that could be severed quickly, painlessly, as
easily as it had been formed, would not occur to a Starfisher. But
they lived in a closed, static culture where a severely limited
number of people passed through their lives. Friendships were
expected to last a lifetime.
BenRabi was leery of the morrow. The isolation of the landsmen,
far out in a remote residential cube, had minimized cultural
friction during the week. But Kindervoort, for whom the outsiders
had become a pet project, planned to make recreation day a gigantic
college smoker, with floods of Seiners being exposed to landside
ways.
Still trying to gentle everyone in, Moyshe supposed. Kindervoort
was a rather thoughtful, admirable cop. He might get to like the
man yet.