Hidden in Sight (40 page)

A forest the Tumblers wanted removed.

Maybe
. Or maybe they were encouraging more trade—the visitations seem to suggest that. Everyone knew the day had to come when the Tumblers realized they didn't need to pay Crawdad's Sanitation to clean up the Port City.

They'd sent him messages, brought daily by a delegate who, in most un-Tumbler fashion, asked for him by name. Long, convoluted messages. Messages that were longer than most books he'd ever read. None of them actually referred to the starships. None of them, that he could tell, were complaints. Some were quite entertaining, in a cryptic way.

Yesterday, they stopped. Alphonsus didn't know what that meant either.

But it didn't take an alien culture specialist to know this haphazard flood of uninvited ships was unpopular with one group. Alphonsus grinned to himself. Naomi Crawdad and her company suits were burning up the com lately as well. Since the rush, a Tumbler couldn't drop a glittering bundle without a horde of spacers ready to pick it up.

Not that there'd been a Tumbler here since yesterday's chime-along—or whatever you'd call it when an impressive group of twenty Tumblers lined up to chime a single chord for most of the afternoon, right in front of the only shipcity access not plugged by a starship. Alphonsus' grin widened. Crawdad's futile effort to cordon off the deposits had almost precipitated a riot.

It wasn't that he disapproved of the company's legal and exclusive contract; he simply enjoyed seeing someone else grab the big ones for a change.

A polite cough signaled that his second-in-command, an older Moderan named Bris, had managed to sneak up on him again.
Having padded feet was cheating.
“What is it?” Alphonsus asked, turning his back on the viewport.

“Sir.” Bris had stopped a safe distance away, although he was really quite adept at not spitting when vocalizing sibilants. His soft snarls were translated into comspeak through the implant in his throat. “We've a translight com for you. It's Joel Largas of Largas Freight. He says—well, you'll want to hear this for yourself.”

Alphonsus stiffened.
Was this it? The trouble he'd been waiting for?
He hadn't slept a full night this week, not since that warning arrived—or, more accurately, since he'd flashed a coded message to Paul Cameron and it had been reflected back, an indication the host receiver was nonfunctional and the backups hadn't been engaged.

Paul had promised the system was foolproof, that he'd be able to compensate from any location with a translight com.

In his lengthy career, on worlds and stations where he'd investigated crimes that turned stolen boots and incomprehensible chiming into ways to mark time until retirement, Alphonsus had learned the simplest explanation for someone failing to make contact as expected.

They couldn't.

The person who might know was waiting.
Alphonsus tried not to appear to hurry to the com room, the heart of any Port Authority. Picco's Moon boasted better equipment than its traffic required, by way of obligatory donations from Crawdad's Sanitation Ltd. Much of the equipment sat unused, however, because Tumblers funded the staffing. Since none of Alphonsus' predecessors had been able to clearly convey the need for increasing numbers of staff, they'd been unable to increase that funding from the amount requested before Alphonsus was born.

The lack of staff hadn't been critical until this week, when he'd had to assign search and rescue personnel to sit the coms along with the regulars, or risk ships coming in on the same landing vectors. Right now, it looked deceptively peaceful; the staff looked half asleep. A few waved a greeting. Most were leaning on one or both elbows, staring into their displays. Cups of sombay paraded across every surface, some steaming, most cold.

At least they only had to deal with local traffic on actual approach,
Alphonsus thought with relief. Innermost of three Port Cities in the Xir System, their responsibility was confined by Picco's orbit and included only this Moon suitable for landing. Outsystem traffic routed through Port Authority on Nerri, the most distant of Xir's worlds, into Xir Prime, then was further sorted insystem as it passed Port Authority on Szhenna, a popular stop for methane breathers seeking a spa experience.

Alphonsus decided against having the call transferred to his office, however much he'd prefer privacy. Privacy implied something to hide, not a safe thought to raise when it was true. “Station 4, please,” he asked quietly, hearing Bris echo the request as he took the empty chair. When the green light flashed, he pressed the button to accept. “Port Authority, Picco's Moon. Lundrigan, here.”

“Phonse, when are you going to retire?” The friendly, familiar greeting, as if nothing was wrong. He'd know Joel Largas' rich voice anywhere.

“When they raise my pension,” he replied, as always. “What can I do for you, Joel?”

“Get me down there, Phonse. Your people are telling me to park in orbit. My captains are telling me there's some kind of rush—that Tumblers are throwing gems at them. What's going on?”

“If I knew, I'd tell you. But you know I can't mess with the docking priors. We've got—” Alphonsus snagged the daily report from Bris' paw and read the line in red “—thirteen ahead of you. And Largas Freight has, last I looked, six ships already docked. I'm not playing favorites. They'd lynch me!” Given the passions he'd witnessed for himself the last few days, that wasn't necessarily exaggeration.

“I can't tell you everything on an open com. Trust me, Phonse, you want me down there, now. The criminals responsible for the attacks on Minas XII—I've reason to know they are already on Picco's Moon or coming your way.” A pause. “You know me, Alphonsus. You know I wouldn't be here—wouldn't be asking this—if it wasn't a matter of life or death. I've kin on those ships. Including my grandchildren.”

“I know.” The
Largas Legend
had finned down two days ago, Tomas and Luara Largas being sent to pay the courtesy call and docking fee. Tomas, all grown-up and looking more like his grandfather every day; Luara with their father's eyes and disconcerting attentiveness. Without a clear idea what had happened, Alphonsus hadn't dared ask if they knew why Paul wasn't answering. “Give me a moment. Lundrigan out.”

Alphonsus drummed his fingers once on the console, then lifted two in a signal. Bris leaned closer. “The evac pad's still clear?” he asked.

“You can't be serious.”

“We don't want criminals roaming about, do we? Let's get him down, hear what he has to say. He can keep his engines live—lift out of the way if we need the pad. Make it happen, Bris.” Alphonsus surrendered his chair to the other, whose subvocal snarl didn't need translation.

Alphonsus walked toward his office, preoccupied by the dreadful conviction he knew exactly which criminals Joel planned to expose to him. He was halfway across the com room floor when the com-tech at station nine turned and said: “Sir! Sir, we have Ganthor.”

The head of Picco's Moon Port Authority stopped in his tracks. “Say again?” he asked weakly. The entire room went silent. Everyone listened. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Bris rising from his chair, the hair on his shoulders and back fully erect so the Moderan looked half again his normal size.

The com-tech's voice was amazingly professional, all things considered. “I repeat, sir. We have Ganthor on approach.”

“You're sure?”

“Yessir. It's hard to be wrong about them, sir.” An understandable edge to the last “sir.”

“Do we have them on scan?” Alphonsus demanded, moving toward the scan-tech as he spoke, meeting Bris so they loomed together over the unfortunate being. “Hurry up! What's the word from outsystem?”

Voices began to overlap, properly calm, informative voices, now that he'd put them to work. “Szhenna reports fifty heavy cruisers incoming on the elliptic.” “Nerri confirms a group of fifty. Now they report a second fleet upward of seventy. They're still scanning.”

“I have them, sir. It's hard to count them while they're bunched. Sir. Szhenna confirms. The Ganthor aren't responding to hails. They're just—coming.”

Alphonsus put one hand on the scan-tech's shoulder, half reassurance, half to keep himself steady.
He was a Port Jelly, not a general.

“Maybe they heard about the gem rush,” someone ventured, provoking a few nervous chuckles.

“Let's not make assumptions,” Alphonsus said, straightening. “Cilla, send a squeal set for one-day translight, coded for Commonwealth military vessels. Tell them our situation. Make sure they know we have significant civilian traffic on the ground and no way to clear landing space. Warden, Lerya, Joe. I want those ships out of orbit and any inbound fools turned around now. Send them to Szhenna if you have to. Who's linked to Nerri?”

“Me, sir.”

Dravis. Her voice wasn't as steady as the rest, but that could have been feathers over her implant. “Advise Nerri to shut down this system if they haven't already. No incoming traffic. Get that confirmed by Havaline. Don't take some groggy 'tech's word for it.”

That drew another, easier set of laughs. They were settling into the work, relying on him.

“Yes, sir.”

“And someone go down to crew quarters and wake up Mason and Trit. I want them to go out and find a Tumbler who knows what's happening. Now.”

The Chief Constable took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and let it out again, then nodded to himself. They'd done what they could about the near future—that left dealing with the now. “Bris?” he said firmly. “Let's find out what Largas wants and get him off that evac pad. We might need it.”

24: Shipcity Afternoon

FOR once, I wasn't the one who'd misjudged a form's capabilities and had to suffer the consequences. Though my pleasure in Skalet's current misery was probably both ephemeral and childish, I couldn't bring myself to feel any guilt at all. In fact, I thought Ersh would have enjoyed it, too.

I was, however, a little puzzled by its cause. Finally, after testing the cold rain curtaining our shelter with my fingers for the third time, and imagining Skalet crouched just beyond sight in the deluge, I had to ask Paul. “Do you know why she won't come in here with us?”

We sat shoulder to shoulder, so I knew he could hear me over the storm. Still, his answer was slow in coming. “I'd know if she were Human,” he said at last, in that tone of voice he used when hoping to avoid further questions.

Not that it worked.
I was a firm believer in questions, and their answers. His reply was not satisfactory at all. “She is not Human,” I pointed out. “I see no reason why she can't come in out of the rain.” Skalet didn't have the excuse of needing to dump heat—her cycle into the Refinne and back would have taken care of that excess quite nicely.
Which meant
, “She could become chilled,” I told him. Not that it was much warmer inside our tiny cavelike shelter, given we sat on cracked pavement, protected by a portion of collapsed wall.

For some reason, Paul sighed deeply at this, then moved as far from me as possible. Intermittent bursts of lightning helped me see that he was pulling off his clothing. As a being of superior judgment, I clutched mine tighter to me and prepared to protest this behavior.

But the next flash revealed I was alone.
Paul?
I waited three breaths, then, just as I shouted: “Paul!” a figure dove through the rain to crouch next to me. I reached out in the dark, touching chilled, wet flesh, feeling the shudders coursing through muscle as the body tried to warm itself. “That was pointless,” I started to say, then realized the breathing beside me wasn't his.

Flash.
Skalet, a glimmer of rain-slicked white. She had clothing in her hands and was struggling to put it on.
Paul's clothes.
Several possibilities passed through my mind, none of which completely fit the events. I pulled up my knees and curled into a morose ball to await enlightenment.

Once Skalet finished squirming, she gave a low whistle. Another figure dove into our shelter—as wet and almost as cold—and shoved against my other side, pushing me into my web-kin. She didn't complain, likely because I was by far the warmest thing in our now overcrowded cave.

Was
, being the operative word, as Paul tucked himself into my shoulder and his chill began to steal heat from that part of me as well. From the feel of them, they'd divided the clothing so neither had adequate protection from the weather. Both were soaking wet.

I decided against further questions, given the unlikelihood of a sensible answer from either of them until the storm ended.
If,
I grumbled to myself, trying to reclaim at least some room for my shoulders,
I received one even then.

I certainly didn't expect one from Skalet, even if she was responsible for our huddling here to wait out the monsoon which had taken the place of sunset. Paul had the Quinn family's ident. Skalet and I knew the codes to release funds to any of a hundred other suitable identities for this planet. We could have been dry and warm by now.
With supper.

But no.
We were waiting for dawn and hiding in rubble, the remains of a row of buildings near the shipcity. From the way the pavement shuddered periodically, structures built to withstand hurricane winds had succumbed to the arrival of massive docking tugs and other paraphernalia of modern transport. Though I recalled from Ansky-memory that Carcows could do significant damage to cobblestone, if allowed to follow the same route too often.

Useless facts.
I hunched into a tighter ball of discomfort, wishing I had the Human ability to pick and choose what to remember. Like Ersh, I could isolate selected memories into specific portions of my mass and completely remove them from my body—a dreadful process requiring a significant period of mourning, and occasionally fudge, even when I knew my missing portions were in the kitchen cryofreezer.