Barsoom’s underworld was not that big. Both brothers knew his employers, well enough to sell the Aymads their own meds back. Joe tried to cheer him. “Least you got a woman to treat you.”
“You’re one lucky sucker,” Jeramie agreed. “A little to the left, and you’d have lost that foot.” Chuckling over SinBad’s good fortune, they hoisted the loot and took off, leaving him in Tiffany’s care. She finished bandaging his foot. “Fine friends you have.” Like he had a choice. “I have no friends. At least the Massingales do not toss pretty blondes overboard.” Not on the first date.
“Good to know.” Tiffany helped him pull on the bloody sand boot. “What now? You were going to deliver me to the wind wagon, but you robbed it.”
“Not me,” SinBad objected. “Massingales did that.” Tiffany accepted the distinction. “Transporting stolen property, then.”
“That’s my job,” SinBad reminded her. “Though right now, I am working for free.”
“I know.” Tiffany ran her hand up his thigh.
Which felt astonishingly good. Too bad he was half lame. And Thuria would be up soon. He limped about, readying his sand sail, then arranging furs to keep Tiffany hidden. She asked, “Is this really necessary? Hiding from the nearer moon?”
“Not if you want to be seized by Slavers.” These notorious cosmic pests infested Barsoom’s inner moon. Tiffany peeked out from between the furs. “On Erotopia we partied happily, with Thuria hurtling overhead.”
“That just means they got a good look at you.” Pleasure palaces had defenses even Slavers feared, like batteries of Issus surface-to-space missiles. Greenies did not care so long as they exploded in the air.
“Macroscopes can read the logo on the seat of your hot pants. If they see you now, I’ll be dead, and you’ll belong to the highest bidder.”
Who wanted that? Tiffany stayed hidden until Thuria had set. Of all the offworlders SinBad had met, Tiffany was the most willing to learn. Too bad he must be rid of her. But he must. They were almost out of offworld meds. With the wind holding steady, he rode on through the night, steering by Cluros and starlight. Thuria rose and fell. Just past dawn, desert hardpan turned to soft mossy sward, a sign they were nearing the canal. Presently palm tops poked over the close Barsoomian horizon. An airship drifted overhead, following the line of the canal, a long silver craft, gleaming in dawn light. A wide blue banner trailed behind the gold control gondola.
Tiffany asked, “Should I hide again?”
“They won’t care about us.” Airfolk had their own worries.
“Then why are they turning our way?”
Unbelievably, the big airship was coming about, bearing down on them. Shit. What had he done now?
He was not due in Hastor until tomorrow, so it could not be the Aymads. They did not know he had betrayed them, yet. None of his other enemies traveled in such style. Fliers in solar-powered wings spilled out of the silver ship, flitting down toward them. SinBad hit the port brake and spun around, turning his sail into the wind. Tiffany put her hand on his shoulder, asking, “What are you doing?”
“Coming about. We’ll never outrun them.” And they had nowhere to hide on the flat yellow-orange sward.
“Who are they?” Tiffany asked.
“Someone nice, I hope.” He kissed her hand. If not, he would die—because of her. Winged figures landed around them, women in blue jackets and gold kilts, wielding short composite bows. Young business-like women eyed him warily, from behind bent bows and razor tipped arrows.
“Who are they?” Tiffany whispered.
“Not sure.” Winged Amazons were a first, even for Barsoom. “Northerners maybe, not desert folk.” Fliers grabbed the dangling ground lines, guiding the airship down. Her name was on the nose, in big red letters, Jeddara.
With the silver ship tethered a few feet above the sward, a ramp dropped down from the rear of the golden control gondola, and the lead archer told them, “Come.” SinBad went quietly. As did Tiffany. Inside the gilded control car were more women, along with albino SuperChimps to do the heavy lifting.
SinBad was searched for weapons, by a thorough young woman who did not enjoy her task. When she determined that he was lame and unarmed, he and Tiffany were ushered into the glass-walled command cabin. White apes worked big manual control wheels, keeping an even keel, as the airship lifted off. SinBad saw his sand sail sitting on the rusty-yellow sward below, watching it dwindle, then disappear. So much for his livelihood. And any hope of satisfying the Aymads. However this interview ended, he was a dead man.
He was presented to the airship’s commander, a tall woman in a gold gown, with a white fur cloak, made from the hide of some big arctic beast. Her hair was as white as her cloak, a wild frosty mane enclosing finely chiseled features, and pale ice-blue eyes.
Flanking her were two SuperCat bodyguards in battle armor, bio-constructs with humanoid brains, like Greenies; only SuperCats had tawny fur, feline faces, clawed fingers, and long curving saber-like upper canines. These two carried repeating crossbows.
There was a Greenie in attendance, wearing a flier’s harness bearing the insignia of Greater Helium. He was a bald, handsome, humanoid bioconstruct, with photosynthesizing green skin, who plainly enjoyed his job. Photo sapiens were bisexual nudists, designed to adore humans. Flying about in an airship full of human females was a Greenie guy’s idea of heaven.
“Are you SinBad the sand sailor?” asked the lady in white and gold.
“Yes.” He was the notorious O-mad outcast, facing offworld law at last. Until he met Tiffany, aerial authorities had not touched him.
Despite it all, he could not help wondering what his captor was like between sleeping furs. He was a guy, a sex offender for Issus’ sake—he had to wonder. Her ladyship’s beautifully biosculpted face was as inscrutable as her SuperCats. SinBad could not tell if she was ten or thirty, Barsoom years—twenty to sixty Earth years. SinBad was twenty-two himself, and had assumed Tiffany was in her teens, though now he was not so sure.
His captor turned to Tiffany. “And you?”
“Tiffany Panic, your highness.”
“Ah, the air hostess.” Her ladyship smiled thinly. “My correct title is Lady Kadara, Guardian of the North. I serve the Jed of Horiz.” Horiz was a seaport on the North Polar Sea, thousands of haads away. What was she doing here?
“Our noble lord of Horiz is extending the rule of law south of the equator. Past Exhume and Hastor, as far south as possible....”
From polar sea to polar sea. Ambitious, but hardly SinBad’s business. His was smuggling.
“...beginning by arresting you.”
SinBad was not totally surprised. “What for?”
“Theft of cargo. Attack on a wind wagon. Illegal transport of a sex worker, by a sex offender.” Lady Kadara shook her white head in dismay. “No wonder they call you SinBad.” Her battle-armored SuperCats smirked. So did the Greenie.
“But I am not carrying contraband.” Aside from the drugs that went into him and Tiffany. Kadara grabbed him on the one day that he was not riding dirty.
“We have 3Vs of the incident. Your sandboat is plainly IDed.” Tiffany spoke up. “He was not in it.”
“Really?” Kadara seemed surprised.
“He was wounded in my defense. Winged men stole his sand sailer, using it to rob the wagon—while I tended his foot.” A total lie, yet Tiffany told it so well, SinBad half believed her. Lady Kadara was not so easily fooled. “How did he get his sand craft back?”
“They returned it when they were done.”
“How courteous.”
“I thought so.” Tiffany had a knack for telling soothing lies that men liked to hear. An invaluable talent for an air hostess.
“You know you are being transported by a sex offender.”