“No haggling. Those are the prices.
“Stop ogling yer girl and pay attention,” the short man added. Toby blushed and started to stammer an objection, but he waved it away. “Here, take the kit.” He unceremoniously dumped the black denner into Toby’s arms. “Give him a good scritch.”
It took Toby a second to realize what he meant. Then he started stroking the denner above the ears and under the chin. A deep and resonant purr erupted from it, so loud that he almost dropped the creature.
“Huh!” The short man was waving some sort of diagnostic tool at them. “That’s a strong tone … let me run a couple tests on him.” He rummaged around behind a counter for some diagnostic equipment. Meanwhile, Corva had appeared on the other side of the fencing. She had a tragic expression on her face.
“I can’t afford one,” she said.
Shylif nodded slowly. “I’d like to help you out, but I only have enough for a few days’ food.”
“Jaysir won’t help,” she muttered darkly, “he hates denners.” She aimed a speculative look at Toby. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cash card on you, would you?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I haven’t had to use money yet.”
He and the denner put up with some poking and prodding and ticking instruments being waved over them. Finally the little man grunted in surprise. “He’s good,” he said. “Never would have expected it from such a scrawny little thing … but based on these readings, he could even wake me up.”
“Then we’re good to go?” Suddenly he wondered if the little man could be trusted with the knowledge that they were planning to stow away, and he glanced up at Corva, who laughed.
“Grounce here is legendary among us stowaways,” she said. “He survives on his reputation for discretion. I think we can trust him.”
“Who says you can’t?” The little man glared at Toby.
A few minutes later, Toby walked out of the shop with his denner on his shoulder—and for the first time, he felt he could really say it was his. Or maybe he was its: the little guy was purring ridiculously loudly, and Toby knew he was grinning like an idiot. Corva and Shylif took this in stride. Trying to keep up with the situation, Toby said, “What do we do now? Swim back?”
“Oh, we’re not going back,” said Corva. “By now somebody’ll have told the wrong people about you, and assassins or bots or rentacops’ll be descending on the gallery. No, if you’re gonna stay out of their hands, we’ve got to keep going.”
“Going? But where?”
She jabbed a finger upward. “Orbit. Find us a transport and deep-dive now, so there’re no life signs if they scan it. Disappear from this world entirely. The longer we’re awake and running around, the easier it’ll be for him to find you.”
Toby nodded, then said, “Him? You mean Ammond?”
She gave him that you-idiot look again. “Of course not. His team can’t summon the resources here to really suss you out. No, I mean your brother.”
“My what?”
“You know,” said Corva, looking puzzled. “Peter McGonigal. The guy who owns this world, and Lowdown, and all the rest of them? The one they call the Chairman.”
Five
EVERYTHING BLURRED FOR A second and Toby realized he’d collapsed to his knees. His denner had jumped off his shoulder and was yammering in alarm.
Corva knelt in front of him, a look of alarm on her face. “Toby—what—“He was gasping as though somebody had punched him in the stomach.
“You didn’t know?” She fell back and, sitting on the ground holding her ankles with her hands, she gazed at him in wonder. “You didn’t know that? What did they tell you?”
“That … that Ammond and Persea were working for somebody called the Chairman. And that I … was the heir to Sedna.”
Her laugh was more a bray of disbelief. “Well, that’s true. And I guess it’s no big surprise about Ammond. So, yes, you’re the heir to Sedna. But you’re also the heir to everything else. To Lowdown, and Echo, and Destrier and Wallop and the rest of the 360/1 lockstep. All seventy thousand worlds of it. You didn’t know?”
“P-Peter is alive?”
The look of disbelief on her face shifted; there might have been a hint of sympathy there. “Of course he’s alive. Think! It’s only been forty years for those who were in the lockstep from the beginning. Peter’s alive, and so’s your sister, Evayne. Both rich beyond description, powerful enough that sensible people just stay out of their way. But the Chairman—Peter McGonigal—he’s…” She shook her head. “Bad news, Toby. Bad news.”
“Why? What…” He clearly remembered Ammond saying, The Chairman himself ordered us to kill the boy.
“Chairman,” blurted Toby. “Common term, right? There must be loads of chairmen on your seventy thousand worlds.” But Corva was shaking her head.
“It’s an old term. Ancient. Only ever used to talk about the Chairman of Cicada Corp. Your brother … well, your mother, once, but that was before I was born.”
“My mother? What about her and Dad—I mean, my parents? Are they alive, too?”
There was a shout from nearby. Jaysir was standing at the edge of the market, his big bot with its clattering, flailing cargo of pipes and cables lurking behind him. Apparently it couldn’t cross the invisible line into the market’s bot-free zone. “What’s goin’ on?” Jaysir called.
Shylif stuck out a hand and helped Toby to his feet. Corva was looking everywhere but at Toby as she too stood up and dusted herself off. “Your parents’ story is a bit more complicated. Look, we can’t tell it here in the middle of the gray market. We’ve got to keep moving.”
Toby felt a crazy laugh rising in him. “Why? Seems to me, I own this.” He stamped on the colorless concrete.
“Your brother controls it, but even he doesn’t strictly own it.” She grabbed his arm, and as his denner swarmed up his body (pricking Toby a dozen times as it used its claws for purchase) she pulled him into a walk. “But come on, we have to get off Auriga before you get caught. I’m happy to talk about this stuff, but not while we have to focus on evading cameras and spy bots.”
And she proved true to that threat, as did Shylif and Jaysir. Toby’s mind was crowded with questions, but all he got was terse answers while the others led them carefully through the industrial zone. Eventually they found an ore train headed through the human part of the city to the orbital freight elevators. Getting on board it involved watchfulness, careful timing, and a little luck, so when they were finally safe Corva lay back on a heap of dried seaweed and wearily waved away Toby’s questions. He and the others sat on barrels of hydrocarbons bound for orbital industries, while the train barreled deafeningly through narrow ice tunnels and past flickering flashes of siding caves and stations. Toby felt stunned; he needed some time to absorb the mere fact that his brother and sister were alive—and that Peter had apparently ordered him killed.
His denner provided a bit of welcome distraction, because he was fascinated by the train and all its rattling parts. The little guy kept hopping off Toby’s shoulder to explore, stopping right on the brink of falling off the train. Alarmed, Toby went to pick it up several times; after hissing on the first occasion, it let him. With nothing else to focus on, he turned his frustrated attention to it.
Wrecks had seemed half otter, half cat. This one was more catlike, but as the denner let Toby gently splay its front paws, he saw that they were more like little hands than feet. It could curl its half fingers around Toby’s, and as it exploredit picked up things to look at them. The shape of its legs and how it walked on them gave it the gait of a racoon, but its sinuous flexibility was all feline.