"I don't think so. I can't find a hole that would've caught their attention."
"What're you doing now?"
"Trying to figure out how to get our guests into Tregesser Horata."
"Anybody going to get suspicious if I turn up with an artifact for a playmate?"
"No."
"There's one covered."
"Artifacts come and go. Ku warriors don't."
"It's your competence. Where's Tina, Nyo?"
"Fussing around trying to get everything on the lighter."
"And I've got everything loaded but live baggage," a voice said from Nyo's wrist. "Will you come on?"
Blessed glanced around. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something."
Nyo grunted. Cable did not say anything till they were on the launch platform. And that was something Blessed did not want to hear. "We'll have to bring Provik in on this eventually. There's no way around it."
"That means handing the whole damned thing over."
"He'll have somebody on the Voyager. He'll have somebody around us every minute. There won't be any way to hide the Ku."
The first person Blessed saw aboard the Voyager was that woman who had been Provik's companion that last day in the Pylon.
She smiled her enigmatic smile.
— 71 —
N. Etoartsia 3. Tregesser Hyxalag High City. Myth Worgemuth sneered. He had seen DownTowns that pleased him more.
The High City was bedecked with special effects. It was some damned holiday he did not understand and had no intention of understanding, though he was hosting a gala for Tregesser Hyxalag's cream.
Be barely better than scum in Tregesser Horata, he told himself, and kept smiling.
He looked out at the High City, sneered again, glanced at his guests. The locals ignored him. He could slide out for a dip without anyone noticing.
He slipped.
He was dipping from a jar of Jane—the finest True Blue—when he realized he was not alone. A figure in black moved toward him. "Who the hell are you?" The figure unnerved him. He backed toward the doorway.
"Go ahead and snort, Myth."
"Valerena? What're you doing here?"
"Take it, Myth."
He looked down the half-meter barrel of a hairsplitter. Its compressed sodium bullet could cook his brain beyond hope of reclamation.
He snorted a dip. The euphoria started immediately.
"Do one on the other side."
Voice frightened but growing languorous, he protested, "That would put me out of it."
"Do it, Myth."
He did it. He had no choice, did he?
Two minutes later he needed help standing. The woman in black helped. She led him to the rail of the balcony, where he could support himself. She dropped his jar of Jane. A fortune spilled across the balcony. He did not notice.
"Goodbye, Myth." She squatted, lifted his ankles, flipped him over the rail.
He giggled for a while, having fun flying. Then he stopped doing anything at all forever.
— 72 —
The Trajana ghost bustled around WarAvocat, babbling, straining his patience. But he was learning more than he wanted to know about phantom phantoms.
The ghost never did catch on.
He found no breech in the closure of IV Trajana's Core. Trajana, having subsumed its crew into a single character, had become neurotic and lonely but not diseased. The Core tissue remained safely sterile.
— 73 —
Valerena wakened certain something was wrong. She rolled over. The boy jumped up and tore away.
The Others were sleeping. Some had shed their suits. The boy had been squatting over one with an impressive erection.
Valerena laughed through a dry throat. She had a handle on him.
She needed a drink.
As she took a long draught off her canteen tube, she noticed the time.
Two days gone? A night in Elf Hill for sure. No wonder she felt awful.
But they had not been harmed. She supposed they had been studied, but how and why was not evident.
She ate. She drank. She did not waken the Others. She watched the boy, who had gotten a console between them but had not continued his retreat. "You have a name?"
No reply.
"Are you alone?" A bored kid with a battle center as a toy would explain the sniping incidents. She closed her mind to the larger questions that made the whole surreal.
Concentrate on the narrowest possible focus. Get her hands on the boy and work from there.
She rose slowly. He was poised for flight but did not go. He watched, fascinated, as she shed her suit.
It was a matter of time till the moth dipped a wing in the flame.
There was something weirdly exciting, even erotic, going on here. That surprised her. Her couplings had become little more than desperation transactions, brief and usually unsuccessful attempts to escape.
Four Others were awake when Valerena brought the boy to the group. He was hers. Or any woman's who wanted to manipulate him.
She settled on the deck, pulled him down beside her. "This is Tawn. He's amazing." She trailed her fingers up his inner thigh. He responded instantly. "He'll do whatever we want as long as we do what he wants."
"Artifact?" one asked.
"Sort of. He's an organic hologram projected by the Guardship's subconscious. We've got a very horny Guardship here."
"You say if you screw the kid you're screwing the whole damned machine?"
"Near as I can tell."
It looked like House Tregesser could take possession of a Guardship through simple sexual manipulation.
Maybe.
There was a lot she did not yet know. Where were the crew? Why was the Guardship sitting here like a derelict? Why was it in such bad shape?
She let her hand drift into the boy's lap. He would tell her.
It was outrageous. Absurd. Unbelievable. It was a surreal and spooky universe.
— 74 —
It was the first time the Barbican and House Horigawa had seen Guardship soldiers. Everyone dockside stopped to stare. One of the soldiers feigned a charge.
Jo snapped, "Hoke!"
"Aw, Lieutenant, I was just..."
"Working on getting the shit details. As usual." She spotted AnyKaat up the curve, with a small, brownish man who should be the purser of the chartered Horigawa Traveller. AnyKaat waved.
The purser spoke first. "Is this the lot, Lieutenant?"
Trying to be cool. Like having his Traveler rebuilt and taken over was nothing new. "All the personnel. There's still cargo in the system. Where are the others?"
"The two Colonels are on the bridge, putting in black boxes. The other one is snooping."
AnyKaat smiled. "Degas being Degas."
"Where is the alien?"
"In his quarters."
AnyKaat asked, "Want me to show your people where to go?"
"That's my job," the purser snapped. "Come along, you people."
Jo dismissed the soldiers, asked AnyKaat, "Are they all like that?"
"All of them. Working real hard to show us they aren't impressed. Wait till you meet the Chief. You'll wax nostalgic for Timmerbach. Though Colonel Haget has his number."
"That's TDA brevet-Colonel Haget." Jo grinned.
"Be like him to insist we use all that luggage, too. Wouldn't it?"
"What the hell. You can't have everything. He's good in bed."
"Wouldn't he love to hear you tell me that."
"He'd shrivel up and die. How's Seeker?"
"Settled in and eager to go. Except he don't know where. I gather his Lost Child has to have a seizure before he can sense her."
AnyKaat guided Jo to her cabin. This time there would be separate quarters for whoever wanted them.
"He's awfully evasive."
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Damned right. I don't say I don't understand, only that I don't like it." She began removing her combat suit. "I'll drag this back to the armory later. This cabin is huge."