Страница 3 из 8
I'm dumbstruck. The Navy shouldn't move in yet. Nor should Seiners so casually turn on pursuers—not, at least, on my Navy. I look around. The few angry faces I label "competition dismayed." Across the room, Mouse appears bewildered. The Sangaree woman is in a rage, face red, fists clenched.
The First Lieutenant fields a few questions before retreating, all with a single explanation. "We've entered a hydrogen stream, taken station with a fleet. Starfish noise is being broadcast from scoutships. We often do this to cover the withdrawal of our vessels forced to enter 'civilized space.'" He leaves us thinking.
We go too, Mouse and I glumly wondering if we're now expendable.
The general alarm sounds. Engagement is imminent. I hope the admiral (I'm considering my own survival, not his comfort) recognizes the trap and gets out. I'm hoping the Seiners don't do angry, rash things afterward.
I've hardly strapped in. The vessel rocks. Departing missiles. I'm amazed. She's got batteries heavier than her appearance suggests.
I took this job expecting the total boredom of unchange, nul-novelty, but find surprises come almost too fast to assimilate.
The all-clear sounds shortly, and with it a buzz from my cabin door. It opens. A crewman asks, "Mr. benRabi? Come with us, please." He's polite, oh, polite as the spider inviting the fly. His teeth seem all white sharp and pointy. Behind him are ratings with angry guns. Yes, I'll go with him.
As I join him in the passage, another door opens with a characteristic squeal. Yes. A group is collecting Mouse.
Done already, I think, and by space gypsies centuries behind the times. How?
"Ah," says the Ship's Commander as we enter his office, "Commander Igarashi, Commander McCle
"You're wondering about your Navy friends? Decided discretion was the better part. Admiral Beckhart must be perturbed." He chuckles. "But that's not why you're here. It's those tracers you've got built in."
This startles me. He's talking plural. I thought I was the only one with a unit, and Mouse was along for the ride. Mouse, it seems, thought the same. Wheels within wheels, and I should've guessed. It's the Bureau's way.
"All biological, eh? Interesting development. Passed our detectors easily. But we're a paranoid people—and think of everything." Smugness. "We've watched the hyper bands since liftoff, had you pegged in hours. Dr. Du-Maurier... ."
Hands seize me. The doctor examines me quickly, numbs my neck and the side of my head with an aerosol anesthetic. He produces an antique lase-scalpel.
The Ship's Commander says, "This'll be fast and painless. We'll pull the ambergris nodes ... and sell them back to the Navy next auction, I think." He chuckles again. I smile. There's a curious justice in it. Mouse and I, and others, are aboard in hopes of locating the great night-beasts which produce just that little item.
Ambergris, the High Seiner calls it. My studies say ambergris is a "morbid secretion" of Old Earth whales, very valuable. Others, landsmen, call the material star's amber, spacegold, skydiamond, any of many names. It's the wealth of our age. In the old tongues its name is hard, pithy. It's the solid wastes of Starfish—crap, but crap without which interstellar civilization, as it exists, could not be. There would be no fast star-to-star communication.
In a way I don't understand (having no knowledge of the physics), a tachyon flow is generated in a gap between as ambergris node and a Bilao crystal anode. These are the only materials that will do. Neither can be synthesized. Bilao crystal, mined on Sierra, is many times cheaper than ambergris. The tachyon stream is formed into a coherent beam which computers impress and aim at a receiver. Each tachyon carries an impressed hologramatic
portrait of the whole message. The receiver need catch but a few. Thus distance, diffusion, beam spread, small aiming errors are overcome.
Every planet in The Arm, of six races and countless governments (the Sangaree not included) is part of an instel net: military, government, or commercial. The demand for ambergris far exceeds the supply. Such a vast market can never be saturated.
Communication is the foundation of civilization. There are trillions of beings in The Arm, thousands of planets, millions of ships, all wanting instel—and all the Seiner fleets produce less than a hundred thousand nodes each year. No wonder the vultures gather.
Vultures. Mouse and I are vultures—no, rapacious birds, falcons hurled aloft to bring down game information. We're to locate a herd, tell Navy where, let it be seized for Confederation. A better ownership than the Seiners', who sell to anyone meeting their price. They're too democratic, from Confederation's viewpoint. Often, under their system, the stones go to belligerent, imperialistic governments, or unscrupulous corporations. We're here to stop that. Uh-huh. Sometimes you tell yourself tall ones, else you ask questions, worrying no-matters like right and wrong.
My soul, slithering past morality shyly, merely mumbles I want. There is pain in it I can't withstand. I must find my Grail, and soon, or abandon this secret quest. I've seen men so, in grim places on beautiful worlds, zombies with huma
"One down." The doctor tosses the node-anode piece to the Ship's Commander. I feel no pain. I'm glad he interrupts the thoughts. I'm on the edge of a scream. He turns to Mouse.
"We don't like spies," says the Ship's Commander. We. Always these people say we. The worm within me squirms. This man touches my need. I try to seize something, to know, but like a wet catfish it easily wriggles from my grasp. "But Danion's dying. We love her. We'll keep you alive, keep our contracts, work you till you drop, till Danion can live without you, then we'll send you away. Please be no more trouble than you've been. We need you desperately, but we'll not be pushed too far.
Return to your quarters. We'll get underway soon, for home."
I rise, touching the small bandage behind my ear. There is no pain, but its presence makes me think of bigger cuts on my body and soul.
Mouse is done. We walk glumly along a passage, unescorted. There is nothing to say, so we're silent. Finally, as we near my cabin, he asks, "What now?"
I shrug. We're partners, neither senior, but I've been hoping he would decide. "Go for the ride, I guess. We have a year. Can they keep their guard up forever?"
Beyond Mouse I see the Sangaree lady. She smiles and waves. There's a hint of gloating in her ma
Mouse catches it too. "Should've killed her on the Broken Wings," he mutters. He's shaking. His brown face wrinkles nastily. "Maybe this time."
I shake my head. "Not here, not now. We've got enough trouble already."
Mouse has never liked her. (I shouldn't, but I haven't his singular gift of hatred. Everyone, everything is too transient for more than mild aversion.) He frequently needs restraint. "She'd better move fast when we hit dirt." I hope our year here will temper his feelings, but fear it won't. His hatred's beyond the usual. I think someone close was a Sangaree stardust addict ("the dream that burns, the joy that kills," the poet Czyzewski said as he was dying). His assignments, he says, are all counter-Sangaree. Those I've shared, he prosecuted with fanatic zeal.