A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) (16 page)

Morgan tilted my chin so he could see my face. “I didn’t plan this, Sira,” he said. “I want you to know—”

I struck away his hand. “Didn’t plan what, Captain Morgan? For me to be valuable cargo? Aren’t you a trader? And how convenient—I can even deliver myself! That is why you tried to trick me into going, isn’t it?”

Morgan leaned one elbow on the bulkhead above his head and sighed. “Maybe I thought it’d be easier. Which doesn’t change a thing, Sira—you must go to Malacan. Now.”

“You said I should make my own choices.”

I might have struck him; his face paled, and red spots appeared on each cheek. “I know what I said.”

“Was that a lie?”

“No.” Morgan ran one hand through his hair. “No. It was just—optimistic.” He shook his head. “Sira, you have to go. If you stay, they’ll simply come to the
Fox
and collect you. At least, by going, you’ve made something of a choice. It might help.”

“I’ll go,” I said flatly, then challenged him. “If you sign me on as crew.”

Morgan stood up straight, eyes full of speculation. “Why?”

“Crew,” I insisted. “By your own rules, that makes you responsible for me, Captain Morgan, on ship or off.”

Morgan smiled very slowly, an unpleasant and humorless stretching of lips that I somehow knew was not aimed at me. “Why not?” he asked himself. “Why not. Ship’s recorder on,” he ordered more briskly. “Record Sira Morgan as current crew—assigned ashore, Ret 7, under Captain’s orders. Recorder pause.” He looked at me for a moment. “You have to accept the contract,” he said. “Recorder on—”

“Contract accepted by Sira Morgan,” I told the air firmly.

“Recorder off,” Morgan finished, holding out his hand. “Welcome aboard, Sira.”

“Profit and safe journey, Captain,” I said, gripping his hand as long as I dared, not saying what I wanted to say, but not having the words ready either. There was a blurriness to my vision which threatened to spill at any time. My anger was long since faded. It hadn’t been deep; under it I fought to contain a horrid dizziness—afraid I was losing myself again. I gripped reality desperately.

“Safe journey,” Morgan echoed. “I hope you find your answers, Sira.” He opened the door.

I blinked rapidly, trying to ignore the tears that made a prickly trail over each cheek, and stepped backward out onto the ramp. The air lock slid closed in my face, sealing Morgan within the
Fox
—excluding me. Answers? What an empty thing to want.

 
I drove the groundcar away from the
Fox,
threading it among the cluster of ships, bumping off the pavement that ended at the gates onto the mud slick the Retians optimistically called a road. It was a “convenience” for offworlders. Off the road, as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t far given the gloom, were innumerable bobbing shapes moving steadily and occasionally quite rapidly across the flat marshland. The native form of transportation, variously called a multi-terrain vehicle, mudcrawler, or can-of-toads depending on one’s preference and company, was a kind of floating tank having both treads and repellers. They worked best on the skin of water which coated the marsh mudflats. Mudcrawlers were not for everyone. The Retian vehicles lacked any shielding; they enjoyed interacting with their environment—whether rain, wave, or mud.

I gritted my teeth at the odd noises coming from my vehicle as I joined the city-bound congestion. The ancient groundcar didn’t care much for stop/start traffic, grumbling much like its owner. I fidgeted, tapping my fingers on the control stick, contemplating what lay ahead. I couldn’t see the city from here. No loss. Retian architecture ran to lumpy buildings squatting in stagnant water.

Morgan’s sheet of directions I had already crumpled and tossed in the back. Now that the
Fox
had me listed as crew, I thought smugly, all I had to do was to order the ship to let me back inside. It shouldn’t be too hard to keep out of Morgan’s way until lift. I’d worry about convincing him to let me stay later. I began to look for a chance to pull out of traffic and turn around.

A few moments later, my palm slipped on the control stick, suddenly damp with sweat. I stared at it, unsure what was happening. Compulsion? No, this wasn’t that familiar sense of someone else’s decision pushing on my will. What I felt now was more a vague apprehension, that turning my head fast enough would catch something lurking behind—something with teeth. The hair on the back of my neck rose with the gooseflesh on my skin.

So I didn’t like Ret 7. The
Fox
would be lifting off soon. And if Morgan gave me any trouble, there were other ships.

No. I shook my head, automatically slowing to a stop with the traffic, alert for my chance to pull out and turn around. Strange, I was certain this feeling came from outside myself.

It was a warning of some kind. A warning from . . .

Morgan! At the very instant I associated his name with the formless anxiety I was feeling, a sleek aircar roared past overhead. Had they traffic control on Ret 7, which I doubted, its pilot would have permanently lost his or her clearance immediately. What mattered more was my totally irrational conviction that Morgan was in the rapidly departing vehicle—and against his will.

I gunned the old groundcar to its maximum output, pulling out of line in front of a huge transport that careened off the road to avoid me. I slipped off the road myself for a moment, taking a mad swerving course through the mud with a skill that owed much to luck. I bumped back up on the pavement, ignoring the shouting behind me. My first duty was to see to the
Fox.

Her ports were locked, but the smaller door answered to my hoarse command as I’d hoped. I secured it behind me, heading immediately for the control room. I could tell he was gone; the ship felt deserted.

The forbidden control room door obeyed my voice, too. Timidly, I stepped inside, looking around me at what was, after all, a simple and ordinary room, familiar from the vistapes I’d studied. Two worn-looking couches waited before duplicate control panels, the left couch with a tray from the galley still hovering alongside one arm. I could smell hot Jaffa and noticed steam curling from Morgan’s cup.

Shaking my head, I perched myself on the copilot’s couch. The seat startled me by curling up on itself to offer a firm support to my back. I pursued my lips, eyeing the complex panels in confusion. There were columns of buttons and toggles whose functions I could only guess. Ah. I recognized the com control with some satisfaction.

But there was nothing to give me a clue about Morgan. I forced myself to think. I didn’t know Morgan’s business.But I’d paid close attention to what he’d told me about Ret 7 during our approach. I knew, for instance, that Morgan had visited this world before, and that he had shipped the com parts because of the interest shown by the Retian priesthood during that earlier visit.

I frowned, remembering. Yesterday, Morgan had taken me along when he’d met with the priests, trying to explain why the cargo they’d thought was theirs had already been sold and taking orders for his next passage through their system. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it, beyond deciding Morgan must have a trading strategy I couldn’t yet fathom.

The priests had stood watching us leave, their wide lips pressed into wavy blue lines that conveyed frustrated anger by any being’s standards.

I suspected there was more to the deal with Malacan Ser and His Lordship than Morgan had told me. I was uncomfortable at the thought that logically followed. Was it me?

A question to ask Morgan—when and if I found him.

The ship was in order, ports locked, security set. Morgan must have gone voluntarily, if quickly. Therefore he had been led to the aircar by someone he knew and at least partially trusted. It was a guess, but a reasonable one, I hoped, that Morgan had been taken from the
Fox
by the priests, who probably had some justification in believing that precious cargo of com parts belonged to them.

Trust. I smiled grimly to myself. I’d learned that lesson. Trust was something I’d grant no one, especially anyone here—including Morgan’s Malacan Ser. There was only myself, the
Fox,
and, to some uncertain extent, Morgan.

As plans go, mine possessed the virtues of simplicity and boldness, if little else. Once prepared, I locked the
Fox
and loaded the groundcar, aware of a chill inside which had nothing to do with the damp air of the surrounding marshland.

I set the vehicle’s controls to maintain course and sat, chin on fist, staring at the faintly glowing comlink as if to will Morgan to action. If he somehow eluded his captors, he might try to leave a message with the ship. By linking the
Fox
’s main com to this transport’s frequency, I hoped to receive any such attempt as well. I tapped the silent com once, for luck, having to trust I’d done it right. It was definitely unsettling to always feel I was doing things for the first time.

The road I chose climbed steadily, its surface becoming firmer and drier as it rose above the wetlands girdling Jershi and the “so-called” shipcity. The vegetation, sparse as it was, changed at the same time, from endless vistas of reed grass, bent by yesterday’s winds, to scattered desperate shrubs. There were no settlements here. I suspected the Retians were partly amphibious. Certainly, they preferred to locate their cities and businesses in the center of marshes—the wetter the better. It was a speculation impossible to verify: Questions about life cycle details of other species were impolite at best, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more about Retians anyway.

These cooler, relatively drier uplands were more to my taste. They also happened to be the only location where the Retians could employ their imported technology with any reliability. I was heading for the oldest and largest of these installations, one which housed a mammoth data storage unit maintained by the religious caste. Data storage was essential to Retian religion, Morgan had explained, because every ritual required knowing each individual’s degree of relatedness to every other living (or dead) Retian. This knowledge determined the right to own land, among other privileges. It was a system rumored to have baffled the computer techs assigned to prepare the installation. Since the priesthood controlled the sale of land, the system neatly precluded immigration, in the unlikely instance that a non-Retian would desire to settle here. Certainly I had no ambitions in that direction.

I turned a corner and the massive building lay below me, its gray-and-brown stone blending at the edges into the native rock walls of the valley. Its relatively dry location was probably unintended by its original builders. There were abundant signs that this hollow had once been as waterlogged as Jershi itself, planet centuries ago. I pulled the groundcar up to a large, unornamented door.

The air was hushed, oppressively humid; the afternoon rains were close. I stopped where Morgan had parked yesterday, the engine of the groundcar sighing as if relieved.

Yesterday, the instant we had arrived, curious junior priests had thronged around us, bustling and eager to see if we carried the parts needed for their holy machine. I’d found them repulsive, with their loose skin and pawing hands, and kept close to the transport while Morgan was inside, discussing trade with their superiors.

I couldn’t see any natives now, and my heart beat faster.

I reached into the carryroll on the passenger seat. By feel, I checked the location of the package sealer, a somewhat unconventional weapon, but the only portable device on the
Fox
not locked under Morgan’s seal. Tucked around the sealer were plas-coated computer components, hardly state-of-the-art but advanced enough to impress, I hoped.

The only visible door into the building, a mammoth affair of stone and metal, opened very slowly and silently. Without looking directly at that gap, I lifted up a handful of the glittering components, letting them trickle from one hand to another. My mouth was dry despite the humidity. Guesswork. Hunches. An empty mind shocked into delusion. I could be propelling myself into a situation I couldn’t handle, for no reason at all.

But just as I could smell an unfamiliar herb in the breeze, as I could taste the dampness of the storm-laden air, I knew Morgan was near. Perhaps his peculiar “gift” was calling to me. More likely, the compulsion urging me to be near him was at last being useful.

“What are you doing here, Trader?” None of the elaboratecourtesy I remembered from my first visit, but at least the priest used Comspeak. I chose my words carefully.

“I wish to trade, Honored Sir. I know of your need for certain supplies—”

The door gaped wider, now revealing a trio of senior priests, robed in red. The leftmost one spoke. “Your captain had traded elsewhere. How can you, an underthing, speak of trade to us?”

I dropped the components into my bag and dared to climb out. “Part of my apprenticeship, Honored Sir, is to use my judgment and share of cargo to make my own deals. If I wish to advance, I have to prove myself. Is it not so with your junior priests?”

“Let us see what you offer.” This from the center priest.

“Not out here,” I said firmly. “The moisture.”

A whispered consultation, then their heads bobbed in unison. Hoping that meant yes, I held the bag tightly and followed them inside.

It was the kind of place where one imagined generations of alterations and additions, done with or without knowledge of earlier plans—all conspiring together into this present-day maze of a structure. I had no doubt that there were different shapes hidden beneath its floors and behind its crisply cornered walls. I followed my guides past dark doorways and empty cubbyholes, through odd tangential junctions. So much for searching for Morgan on my own.

Our destination was a large room with five unequal walls, each lined with plas-protected instruments mounted on sturdy shelves. Several of the instruments were dark and silent. There were no windows; light glowed from imported fixtures of very old design. The floor was beautiful, deliberately uneven, etched in a complex design that wove in and around our feet like ripples on water. It was the nearest thing to an art form I’d seen on Ret 7. I hoped my boots were clean.