Furious Gulf (25 page)

“This is a city?” Toby asked, thinking there must be a language problem. Cities in the old days had been elegant, airy, places
of sweet music and luminescence.

Andro chuckled. “No, kid, this is a reception cell. I’ll show you the city.”

I
t didn’t look like much of a city. The Land of Dwarves, Toby had christened it before they had walked two blocks.

Even in a crowd he could see far into the distance, over the heads of everybody. Stubby people, hurrying everywhere. Yakking,
yelling, laughing, and all in a noisy rush. In the hazy distance was more of the same. Stubby buildings, gray and brown and
black. Stubby trees, even. On Snowglade they would have been bushes.

“What
is
this place?” Cermo sent on comm.

From Andro’s lack of reaction Toby gathered that he could not intercept their Family line. Killeen sent a quick signal that
it was all right to talk this way, so Toby said, “And who are these runts?”

Jocelyn sent a puzzled note. “They’re sure not the high-minded types I expected.”

“Yeasay,” Killeen said. “When we found humans here, I expected them to be from the Chandeliers. Or the Great Epoch, even.
The heroic ones, people who could build in the sky, fought well against mechs, explored True Center.”

Cermo said, “I thought the Great Epoch was when we got to True Center.”

“Nobody knows, really,” Killeen said. “Certainly no Aspect we carry remembers. It was ’way back, must have been done by humans
with powers we can’t even guess. I sure want to meet them.”

Toby caught a curious plaintive note in his father’s voice, but the others gave no sign of registering it. They all marched
along, giving no outward sign of this conversation, gleeful at putting one over on the dwarves. Then he felt Shibo’s Personality
rise in him, welcome though uncalled.

They are rats in bow ties. But useful.

“Huh?” Toby felt the strong thread of her, ivory slivers shooting through his sensorium, masking the gray city.

An ancient term I learned from Zeno. The ancients wore constrictions about their throats to signify attitudes. A “bow tie”
stood for a certain rakish tilt. Andro’s arrogance belies his true station. He is swaggering before the country know-nothings
he takes us to be.

Toby relayed this to the others and they murmured in startled agreement. Killeen nodded. “That fits. He’s trying to impress
us in some way. This place”—a sweeping arm—“pretty fine, sure, but it’s a shack compared with what the Chandelier folk could
do.”

“Could be,” Jocelyn begrudged. “But where
are
the Chandelier Families? How come we’ve got to deal with Andro?”

Toby wished Quath was here to help. Part of him wanted to click his heels, happy that his father had
done
it, found the age-old goal of Family Bishop. The other part wondered what was really going on. Certainly this wasn’t the
grand homecoming they’d all expected. He could read the barely suppressed disappointment in everyone’s eyes.

He wanted to say something to Killeen, to reach across the chasm that had slowly yawned wider through these years of flight,
of the Cap’ncy. But flaming eyes made it hard to have a heart-to-heart.

Andro chattered on about the sights. He seemed to think they were hot stuff, prodigious monuments. Brown municipal buildings
with heavy, ornate columns framing the tiny doors. Factories with no windows and no identifiable purpose. Squat black apartment
buildings with puny balconies that seemed like stuck-on afterthoughts.

Toby sent to Cermo, “I’ll allow as how this is richer than the Citadel, sure. But the Low Arcology ruins, they impressed me
more.”

Cermo replied, “I dunno. Have the feelin’ we’re missin’ something here. I mean, I still don’t figure how this place can even
be
here.”

At last they reached a pyramid-shaped mass of gray, shiny stone that looked a little more important. Their destination.

Andro led them into the rock-ribbed entranceway with a deep bow that was probably sarcastic. Toby gave him a curt nod, stepped
into the foyer beyond, followed Andro across the marble floor—and smacked his forehead on the doorway. He suppressed a grunt.
Andro’s mouth barely twitched in a smirk that was probably lost on everyone else. Rubbing his forehead, Toby followed the
rest into a room with rows of hard benches. A lone figure dominated a battered wooden desk at the far end. The desk was discolored,
chipped, its legs cracked. Toby supposed it was a “relic of office,” such as the ancient chairs used by elders back in Citadel
Bishop.

“Fresh batch, Andro?” the squat, leathery woman at the desk asked. She wore a black robe and looked as if she had weathered
a hard night. “The last ones you brought me are still debating the fine points of import-export law in jail.”

“How was I to know they could get those sniff-dream tablets through our filters?” Andro said plaintively, spreading his hands.
“That’s the engineers’ fault.”

“A wise craftsman doesn’t blame his tools,” the woman said, lazily sliding her eyes over the Bishops. The sight did not seem
to excite much interest; she yawned.

“These beefies are a simple case,” Andro said, stepping forward in a deferential manner. He pressed his right palm against
a small jet-black area on the woman’s worn wooden desk. A
breeeeet!
seemed to signify data transmission from his personal files. “They’re a little hazy about where they’re from, but they don’t
seem bright enough to be hiding any contra.”

“Ummm, you’re probably right there,” the woman said, looking them up and down. Out of the corner of his eye Toby saw Cermo
open his mouth angrily, then close it again after a stern glance from Killeen.

After the learning-food, Andro had given them all language slip-chips to insert in their spinal ports—complaining all the
while about how antique their spinal insert collars were. Toby’s chip was working well already, even though Andro had scornfully
referred to the slip-chip wafers as “dumb-downs,” apparently meaning that they translated the speech of Andro’s people into
sentences simple-minded enough for Bishops to understand.

The woman glanced down at her desk top, which flickered and was not worn wood any more but a glossy display. Toby saw number-thickets
and long lists, all from Andro’s file on them. He couldn’t read the language, but it looked like a lot of information, all
neatly sorted out. Yet Andro had never seemed to be taking anything down, or even paying much attention to them.

Killeen stepped forward, “If you are in authority I must ask that you tell us how to find some relatives of ours, Bishops,
and a man—”

“I am a judge,” the woman said with a flinty, casual air. “And you will remain silent until I ask a question.”

“But we’ve come—”

“Don’t listen real well, do you?” She twisted her hand a funny, helical way. An electrical jolt streamed through the air,
sending Toby’s internal sensorium reeling. It was a stomach-churning, startling effect.

Killeen tottered, looked green for a moment, then pulled himself together. “I . . . see.”

The judge gave him a wolfish grin, all knife-edge and strung-wire fine. “I have taken the trouble to chip-process your speaking
patterns, so can state in firm voice familiar to you the consequences of your actions. I am assuming that you will spend an
annum, maybe two, in the work-house for your violation of our tax codes. If you wish to improve on that figure—”

“Violation?” Killeen bristled. “We sailed into this place in search—”

“Appearing out of the Far Black like that, you set off alarms. The Regency had to muster defenses. You might have been mech,
after all.”

“We fly an ancient human ship!”

“Deception runs rife in the Far Black.
And
you sent no forward-hailer to let us know. Defense costs money, rebble-dep, time, trouble. A debt that must be paid in the
work-house.” The judge shrugged. “Simple social justice.”

Killeen stiffened. Bishops were not merely scavengers; they had always traded with the other Families, to good advantage.
There had even been a time, the infamous Accommodation, when Families bargained with mechs. Killeen said shrewdly, “Maybe
we’re carrying something of interest to you.”

The judge tossed her hair with feigned disinterest. “What could you possibly have?”

“Fresh samples of space plants from a molecular cloud.”

Killeen waved forward Cermo, who added, “We’re regrowing them. Good eating.”

“Ummm. Regional delicacies? Marginal at best.” The judge looked off into space.

Killeen said quickly, “We carry tech we’ve picked up from our homeworld.”

“Ummm.” No reaction.

“And from another. Some strange artifacts. Ancient, maybe.”

“More planet-level goods?” The judge looked bored. “We get rafts and rafts of it when immigrants pour in.”

“Well . . .” Killeen glanced at Toby. “We’re carrying an alien.”

The judge brightened. “What phylum?”

“Myriapodia.”

Her mouth turned down with surprise, then snapped back into a canny flat line. “You’re sure?”

Not a good recovery, Toby thought wryly. And how could anybody mistake Quath for something else? Killeen said offhandedly,
“She captured me on the last planet we visited. I got to know her pretty well.”

“She? I didn’t know they had sexes.” The judge blinked, plainly dumbfounded.

“Several, as far as I can tell.” Now it was Killeen’s turn to fake disinterest. “They’re complicated. Good memories, too.
She’s told us a lot about the Myriapodia’s heritage.”

“Excellent, excellent. There is certainly a market for that information.” The judge thumbed her desk, glanced at a fresh display
in the top, nodded. “I could probably negotiate a suspension of your work-house duties if the proper authorities could have
some time with this alien. I assume you’re holding it under strict arrest?”

Killeen looked shocked and Toby knew it was real. “She’s a friend.”

“Sure, fine, no offense. You realize this will take some delicate negotiations? Experts will have to journey here from ’way
out in the esty. Given the cross-shifts, we’ll have to—”

“Good. See to it.” Killeen was his commanding self again. “We’ve got other business here and we’ll pursue it.”

The judge glanced at her desk again and seemed to receive a message. “The alien, that is an important issue. We would prefer
to have it under our control until—”

“Naysay!” Killeen said angrily. “She’ll be with us.”

The judge hesitated, then her eyes narrowed. “How do we know you’ve really got this Myriapod?”

“We’ll bring her ashore,” Killeen said simply.

“What? Here? But that could be dangerous.”

“Not to us.”

She looked alarmed. “Those things killed people without pity.” Toby recalled Quath’s casual references to how she and her
kind had thought of humans as Noughts, beings who didn’t matter a jot on the Myriapodia’s scale of things. And her forerunners
had hunted primate-type species. Maybe people here were slow to forget—or knew something he didn’t.

“I’ll guarantee your safety,” Killeen said airily, plainly enjoying himself now. “And I won’t even charge you extra.”

Toby could tell that Cermo was having trouble containing his laughter. Then he looked behind them. Somehow, without their
noticing it, a dozen people had quietly come into the big room and were standing at the back. They didn’t look threatening
but they didn’t smile either. They wore small, rectangular backpacks and looked authoritative. This was serious stuff.

“Very well,” the judge said. “Please bring the alien here.”

“Not so fast,” Killeen countered. “I want some information.”

“I can assure you that you’ll be properly briefed once—”

“Now.”

“I suppose we could compromise somewhat—”

“And your Andro here, he said something about a message waiting for us.”

“In due time—”

“Same time as you question Quath. No later.”

She pursed her lips, paused, and then nodded to the people at the back of the room. “I would appreciate it if you would send
a few of your people along with mine here. They can work out the transfer of the alien to our control.”

“Hey, you won’t
own
Quath,” Toby put in.

The judge looked at Toby as if seeing him for the first time, and not much liking the result. “We will establish proprietary
ownership of the information we gain from—”

“You just take it for granted that Quath will talk to you at all,” Toby said rapidly, looking at his father. “Plenty times,
she won’t say a peep.”

“I believe that is a technical matter for the teams which will be sent to interrogate and—”

“Just a second here,” Killeen said. “Toby’s right. You got to handle Quath just so, or you won’t get a used fart out of her.”

The judge blinked. “A used . . . ? I shall assume that was hyperbole, a figure of speech.”

Cermo chuckled and Toby remembered how Quath had built her complex warren, sticking it together with her own feces. “Not entirely,”
Toby said, and smiled mysteriously.

The judge regarded Toby skeptically. “Then perhaps we can enlist your aid. Someone who could help us talk with the Myriapod?”

The other Bishops were looking at Toby. He said, “I suppose so. What you do with whatever Quath decides to tell you, that’s
your business. But we’re not handing her over to you. She stays with us.”

The judge paused, studying the surface of her desk, then glancing at the others in the back of the room. Mildly, but with
a clear threat, she said, “I don’t think you are in a position to dictate terms.”

Killeen turned and gazed steadily at the people behind them. The other Bishops also did an about-face, standing with knees
and elbows slightly bent, hands ready to move. A long, silent moment stretched.

Toby saw his father’s point. These people had tech probably beyond theirs, but they were still human. A lot of communication
was not talk, but presence, and the Bishops towered over these other men and women. Jocelyn and Toby, the shortest, still
were half again the height of these arrogant dwarves.