ARC: Under Nameless Stars (7 page)

Five minutes later, the three of them were riding a lev-tube to the
Helen’s
deck eighteen. Making an excuse about being chilly, Zenn had once again wound the scarf around her head.

When they arrived at the sickbay door, it was locked. The ship’s doctor was apparently out, and after the steward entered a manual passcode on the door’s touchplate, it opened and they entered. The sickbay was spacious, with three examination tables in the central area and various treatment devices and supply cabinets against the wall.

Yed indicated a doorway at the rear of the room.

“Captain Oolo’s mudlark is within,” he said. “Its name is Cleevus.” The steward made no move to enter the room. Zenn was on her own.

“OK, let’s have a look,” she said. The door to the smaller room slid open. It was a dimly lit storage closet with a large, rectangular aquarium-like enclosure set against one wall. Barely visible in the low light, the mudlark squatted in the center of the aquarium, anchored to a spherical rock that jutted up out of six inches of water filling the bottom of the clear-walled box.

Zenn had just felt her way through the near-darkness to the edge of the cage when the dizziness spun up within her. Even after the half-dozen previous times, she was still unprepared for it. Her knees buckled slightly, her thoughts tangled in sudden confusion. The next instant, her vision flickered, then vanished entirely. She was blind! Blind as a… mudlark. And she had become instantly thirsty, an aching thirst that emanated from somewhere outside of her but, at the same time, inside. Yes, it was happening again. She was feeling what this creature felt, their minds somehow linked, somehow sharing sensations, emotions… blindness. It was impossible. There was no scientific explanation for it. But she felt the mudlark’s overwhelming thirst and discomfort as if they were her own.

“…are you unwell?” Jules’s voice sounded miles away, but it was enough to bring her back. The feeling fled from her. Vision returned.

“No. It was just…”

“You were sharing thoughts?” Jules bent his head low, bringing his dark eyes close to hers. “Just now, is that it?”
“Yes. But only for a few seconds. I’m better now.”

The little steward was wringing his hands. “You are not ill, Guest Bodine? You are well?”

“Yes.” She patted him on the shoulder, and he relaxed. So, whatever was afflicting her around animals in distress, she hadn’t left it behind on Mars. No. That would’ve been too simple. She indicated the mudlark. “I’d say that Cleevus seems to be badly dehydrated.”

After another moment to clear her head, and several breaths to steady herself, Zenn pulled a lightpatch from her backpack, adhered the patch to her forehead and turned it on. The mudlark reacted to the beam of light, shrinking into itself slightly, but it made no sound. The creature’s central stalk was several inches thick and about a foot and a half high, topped by a foot-wide cap punctuated with multiple small openings – but all the many aspiration orifices were shut tight. The coloration was a deep, muddy green with iridescent purple streaks. This was clearly a diagnostic symptom. A healthy mudlark should be a light, greenish-beige with no streaking.

“I think it’s got a mineral deficiency,” Zenn said, rummaging in her kit and hoping she was right about the facts from her basic course on Tanduan hybrid fauna.

Zenn found the foil pressure-pak she was looking for and attached it to the smallest-gauge pneuma-ject syringe she had. Leaning down into the mudlark’s cage, she injected the animoid with the potassium booster solution and stood back to wait.

As they all watched the creature for any reaction, Yed explained how the Captain had taught the mudlark a variety of musical pieces, and how he enjoyed showing off his pet’s abilities to dignitaries and guests.

Further conversation was interrupted by a soft, unidentifiable sound, something like bagpipes played inside an echoing cave. Zenn bent down to shine her lightpatch into the cage, where the mudlark had undergone a startling transformation. It stood taller now, the last hints of purple streaks fading, the stalk’s surface flushing with healthy new color even as they watched. The many breath-holes on the cap were open and slowly vibrating. The wheezing sound it was making changed, became more defined and increased in volume, growing until it filled the small room with what could only be described as the sound of musical instruments, accurately reproduced down to the strings, tympani drums and woodwinds, all playing a complex and beautiful melody.

“This music, I know it,” Jules said after a few moments. “It is Master Beethoven’s of Earth. His number six symphonic composition. The ‘
Pastoral
’.” The dolphin closed his eyes and raised his mech-arms, waving his hands in the air as if directing a performance.

“Yes, it sings, it sings.” The steward started to dance to the music, hopping as he spun in a circle, clapping his hands. “The Captain will be joyful. And Yed will be his favored one. I will be favored.”

Zenn smiled at the impromptu celebration, the miraculous music washing over them all, the mudlark swaying back and forth to the rhythm of its many-throated song. It was while she was peering into the sickbay from within the closet that the new thought came to her in a single flash of recognition.

“A sickbay…”

“A sickbay,” Jules said, arms paused in midair. “Yes, it is where we are.”

“No. That’s what I saw, what the Skirni was remembering. During the break-in at the cloister,” Zenn said, moving out into the main bay and walking to the bank of instruments on the wall. “In my vision, when I saw my father, on that table. It wasn’t a hospital room. It was the sickbay of a starliner. And not just any sickbay. It was
this
sickbay. I saw this same exam table, the same kind of equipment, the same sort of cabinets and decorations on the wall.”

She turned around to see Jules and the little steward staring at her outburst.

“Don’t you see? My father must have been here. He was here!” But even as she said it, the thought was replaced: if Warra Scarlett had in fact been here… where was he now?

EIGHT

“Again, I must thank you for the miraculous result you have achieved,” the steward said to Zenn as they rode a lev-car back down toward Jules’s cabin.

“I’m just glad it worked,” Zenn said, smiling with relief. But seeing Yed’s concerned expression, she added, “I was pretty sure, of course, that it would. Work.”

“As I have said, it is our very good fortune you came on board the
Helen
,” Yed told her. “Lucky for the Captain’s Cleevus. Cleevus is lucky in many ways. This animal lives a very good life on this ship. Unlike some other animals, I must say… Ah, we come to Guest Vancouver’s deck.”

Yed opened the lev-car’s door and gestured for them to exit.

“Wait, what did you say?” Zenn asked.

“Oh. I speak out of turn.” The steward’s bright green brow creased, and he looked away. A guilty look? “Yed? What did you mean about the other animals?”

He muttered something and looked down nervously at his webbed feet.

“I am sorry, Guest Bodine. I merely spoke my thought aloud. It is of no account.”

“Yed.” She sounded as firm as she could. “Are animals in trouble? Are they sick? You need to tell me if they are.”

“But… I am paid not to say,” He popped his round eyes at her and wrung his hands.

“Steward Yed?” Jules held his credit relay aloft. “What sum are you paid not to say?”

“Twenty-five units,” he said reluctantly, blinking at them.

“Here then is thirty,” Jules told him. Yed held his own relay up. “You are now paid to say.”

Yed blinked a few more times, then looked down at his relay.

“It is an animal fight I am paid to be quiet about. The Skirni, guest Thrott, has arranged it. Below decks in the steerage levels of the ship.”

“A fight?” Zenn asked. “With what kind of animals?”

“Guest Thrott pits his trained slug against a waspworm. The wasp is owned by a Fomalhaut freedman. There are wagers being placed on this event.”

“When, Yed? When are they going to fight?”

The steward looked at his sleeve-screen.

“Soon. In the next hour.”

Zenn didn’t have to think about it. “You need to take us there now.”

“You? Take you?” Yed looked from her to Jules. “I am not certain this would be… in order…”

Jules raised his money relay again.

Yed slowly raised his relay too, then he spoke to the lev-car.

“Steerage level three, please,” he instructed the car, shaking his head. The doors slid closed and the car started down.

Zenn knew that tickets for passage on the steerage level of starships like the
Helen of Troy
were much cheaper than those for the upper decks. As they stepped out of the lev-car and into the corridor, she understood why.

The smell that assailed them when the car’s doors opened was her first clue: heavy with the exotic odors of cooking foods and thick with the scent of living, sweating beings, both humans and Asents. The passageway before them flowed with moving bodies, a dozen different races thronging in both directions, most of them talking, some shouting, Alien Sentients calling and human infants crying, others hooting, mewing, everyone jostling.

With Yed leading the way, they forced themselves out into the crowd. As they pushed their way through, Zenn saw that here and there along the passage, enterprising individuals had set up small, portable kiosks. At these makeshift stands they loudly hawked all manner of goods to the milling passengers. At one stall, black metal pots set over gas flames boiled and seethed with some sort of stew, attended to by a caftan-clad female Zeta Reticulan – a human-sized biped with a vaguely cow-like appearance. The Reticulan’s boxy head was covered in a downy pelt and bore a double set of flattened horn-like protuberances that curved down over her face, the large, gentle eyes blinking out at the world from beneath this built-in helmet. At another stall, an elderly human male with a long, dingy gray beard tried to get Zenn to buy a gigantically oversized pressure suit, while at the next kiosk an Alcyon busily arranged his table-full of dangerous-looking knives, spare particle-weapon parts and other odds and ends of military hardware.

They came to a turn in the passage, and after a short distance Yed stopped at a large double door marked “Storage Rm 9, Sub-3 – Authorized Personnel Only”. He glanced up and down the corridor and, when the passing crowd thinned, spoke a series of numbers at the door. It swished open.

“Yes, please, enter quickly. I will wait for you here,” Yed said. “It is not good that I should be seen at such an event, you understand.”

The room held perhaps thirty passengers of all races and sizes. They stood around a central open space that was illuminated by a single, powerful light shining down from the ceiling. There was a barrier between the passengers and the center of the illuminated space, thrown together from an array of shipping crates and barrels. Some of those in the room shouted out bets; others waved their credit relays in the air to take those wagers.

Zenn forced her way to the front. At the far side of the circle, she saw the Skirni Thrott, standing next to a large, clear-walled ballistiplast cage set on a wheeled luggage cart. The Encharan fighting slug in the cage was six feet long with glistening, tawny skin lined with burgundy stripes that warned any would-be attacker of its toxic slime coating. When Thrott banged on the side of the cage, it reared up on its fleshy pseudopod, slid its rasp-toothed radula from its mouth, retracted its eyestalks and threw itself against the cage wall with a fleshy thud. The impact left a fresh, dripping film of caustic acid.

The writhing slug drew a shout of approval from the crowd. Then another shout went up as a tall, willowy Fomalhaut male, dressed in a tattered uniform of some sort, emerged from the shadows beyond the boisterous circle. The crowd drew back quickly to allow him to pass. Scuttling along at his side, held by a heavy chain leash, was his waspworm. Its blue-black body moved low to the ground on twelve short, spindly legs, its swollen abdomen carrying at its tip a venomous foot-long sting. The animal vibrated its four overlapping wings as it walked, creating a threatening buzz.

“Har,” Thrott scoffed as the Fomalhaut brought his fighter into the center of the circle. “This will be no contest at all. Watch as my creature pulls the sting off this bug.”

The crowd reacted to this with a mix of cheers and boos. Zenn, her heart beating wildly, climbed up on one of the crates lining the circle.

“Stop!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “You can’t do this!” To her great surprise, the entire room instantly fell dead silent, all eyes upon her, no one moving, the only sounds the gurgling of the slug and the buzzing of the waspworm. “Animal fighting…” she went on, righteous anger making her voice shrill, “…is illegal.”

“Oh, noooo,” the Fomalhaut shrieked in a put-on falsetto voice, clapping both hands up to his face. “It’s ill-leeegal.” The room erupted into laughter.

“You.” The Skirni Thrott jabbed an accusing finger at her. “You have no business here.”

“These animals will be hurt,” she yelled into the din, her face flushing hot. “You have no right to–”

“We have no right?” An especially large Sirenian coleopt stepped out of the crowd to approach her. The towering insectoid raised two of his upper arms at her, his plume-like antennae quivering atop his head, the great multifaceted eyes glinting in the low light. “Who died and made you Queen Spawn-Mother, eh?” The crowd guffawed. “Go back where you came from, hyoomun.”

Zenn’s face glowed hotter and she yelled again for them to stop, but by then no one was listening. No one even looked at her, and the hubbub grew even louder as everyone resumed their betting.

Then, amid the tumult, came a voice that sounded distinctly familiar.

“Scarlett?” Yes. Someone calling her name. It couldn’t be. She searched the crowd for the speaker. No. Yes!

“Scarlett, over here.”

Standing at the far side of the circle of humans and Asents was a tall, fair, sunburned Martian towner boy.

“It
is
you,” Liam Tucker called, swiping at the sheaf of hair that hung down in his face as he made his way toward her. The sight of Liam, wide grin on his face, striding toward her, sparked an instantaneous surge of relief in her. Yes. No doubt about it. This Liam was a friend who she was very glad to see once more.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “You got away, in the cargo hold. I thought you were pinched for sure. What in Nine Hells are you doing down here?”

“We heard about the fight,” she said, raising her voice above the noise in the room. “I came to try and stop it.”

“We?” Liam looked Jules up and down. “You with this guy? I can’t wait to hear
this
story.”
“He sort of… bailed me out,” Zenn said. “He’s letting me stay in his cabin.”

“Really? Nice work. I thought they’d have you on a ferry headed back to the surface by now.”

“What about you? How’d you end up down here?”

Liam dug in his pocket, then held up a credit relay. “Just call me
Victor
LeClerc.”

“You stole Vic LeClerc’s credit relay?”

“Victor, Victoria, who’ll know the difference up here?”

“But how’d you get it?”

“I ‘borrowed’ it when I took the lease papers from Vic’s ranch. Figured I’d need it. I knew I was gonna have to make myself scarce if I blew the lid on what she and Graad were up to. Pretty much maxed it out to bribe the first steward I met after you slammed the door on me back there. But it was enough for a discount ticket to the cheap seats down here. Not exactly the lap of luxury. Hey, it’s off-planet; that’s what counts.”

“But what are you doing in here? This is wrong, and someone needs to…”

A particularly raucous shout went up from the crowd, and Zenn looked over to see Thrott preparing to release his slug into the makeshift arena.

“We have to do something,” she said. “Those animals will cut each other to ribbons. We have to stop this.”

“But you have already attempted this,” Jules said, leaning down so she could hear him above the din. “These gamblers are not concerned with statutes governing this sector.”

“Yeah. What a shock,” Liam said, looking around at the motley crowd of bettors. “This way.” He nodded at her to follow, then shouldered his way out through the crowd. At the far wall, he pulled himself up onto a tall container, pulled a small square of metal from his pocket and held it up to the ceiling. Zenn saw then what it was: an old-fashioned cigarette lighter. She heard a clicking sound as Liam held the lighter up, now with a small flame rising from it. “They don’t give a damn about the law, do they? But ya know what? I’ll bet they give a damn about
this.
”

He played the flame across the surface of the ceiling. A moment later, the room was filled with a cloudburst of water, streaming down like a heavy rainfall from invisible openings in the ceiling. The shock of the cold water hit Zenn like an icy, wet blanket – but Liam was right:

the crowd responded as a single organism, breaking in a chaotic surge for the room’s two exit doors. Shoving and pushing, they slid crazily on the water-slick floor, colliding with each other in their haste to leave, as a digitized voice from somewhere intoned loudly: “Emergency. Unidentified combustion detected in storage room 9, sub-deck 3. Emergency…”

Thrott went by, wheeling his caged slug in front of him. As he passed Zenn, the Skirni shot her a withering glare.

“This is your doing.” He pawed water from his face, sodden robes clinging to him. “You meddle in affairs of which you know nothing. And yet you meddle.”

“This is incorrect,” Jules told him. “This person here is an exovet of the novice rank and knows much about slug types and all variety of creatures.”

“I care not if she is exovet master rank! She meddles. She cost me my winnings. Thrott Larg-Skirnik will not forget.”

Zenn recoiled at his venomous rage, then found her voice.

“It’s against the law,” she said. “And it’s cruel.”

“Bahhg! Law. In the mother-void? What law? You will pay. Thrott will not forget.” Then he shoved the cage through the door and was gone.

“Come on,” Liam said as the last of the room’s occupants slipped out into the corridor. “We don’t wanna be here when they find out it’s a false alarm.” He reached up to help Zenn down from the crate she stood on, his strong hands on her waist. Lifting her down to the floor, his hands stayed in place as she looked into his eyes. Zenn wasn’t sure how to read what she saw there, but the moment seemed to call for something from her.

“That was… quick thinking. Thanks.”

“Hey, just trying to make amends.”

He continued to hold her close, his body warm against hers as the icy water sheeted off them.

“Please, come with me now,” Yed called, peering in from the passage outside. Zenn pulled away from Liam’s grasp.

“That’s Yed. He brought us down here.”

“We must go. And quickly,” the steward said, waving them on. “I cannot be noticed here. I will summon the lev-car.” He padded on ahead of them, disappearing into the throng.

“Liam, this is Jules Vancouver,” she said as they walked. “He has a suite on the upper decks.”

“Nice,” Liam said, his usual smirk returning. “If you’ve got the credits.”

Ahead at the lev-tube, Yed was holding open the door.

“We must go back now, yes, please? It is close to curfew, and we cannot be down in steerage after curfew.”

Zenn and Jules entered the car. Liam remained in the corridor.

“Coming?” she asked.

“No, please,” the steward said, holding one webbed hand up to keep Liam from boarding the car. “This ticket does not allow him to pass above steerage level.”

“Yeah, I’m stuck in purgatory,” Liam said. “But don’t worry about it. I’m adapting. And the Reticulan stew –” he jerked one thumb toward the alien fussing over her bubbling cauldrons a short distance away “–is almost edible.”

“Please! I must return to my duties. It is late. And getting no earlier.”

It occurred to Zenn that Yed was right – it was late. And despite all the excitement, she was getting punchy from lack of sleep, not to mention being soaking wet and freezing.

“I’ll come back soon as I can,” she said. “We’ll figure out… a plan.”

“A plan. Good idea. I’ll look forward to it.” He slicked his wet hair back and gave her a grin. “And Scarlett?”

“Yes?”

“I lied about the stew. Not really edible. Bring some decent food with you.”