He leveled a finger at my chest. "My support and my presence are conditionalon the cargo being totally legit. If I find out we're running drugs or guns orthat we're mask-shilling for the Patth, I'm out at the next port. Clear?"
"Clear," I said firmly, hoping I sounded heartily on his side on this one. Ifhe ever found out about my connection with Brother John, I was going to have somefancy verbal dancing to do. "But I don't think you have anything to worryabout on any of those scores. Borodin told me the cargo had been cleared throughcustoms on Gamm, and one would assume they were reasonably thorough."
"Borodin told me that, too," Nicabar said darkly. "But then, Borodin's nothere, is he?"
"No, he's not," I conceded. "And before you ask, I don't know why."
"I didn't think you did." He peered at me thoughtfully. "If you ever find out, I
presume you'll tell me."
"Of course," I said, as if it went without saying, as I stood up. "I've got toget back to the bridge. See you later."
I made my way back through the wiring undergrowth, wishing irreverently for amachete, and ducked through the aft airlock hatch into the wraparound. Nicabarwas sharp, all right. Maybe a little too sharp. Perhaps his lack of reactionto my story about being jumped was because he already knew all about it.
In which case, unfortunately, I ran immediately and solidly into the questionof why he hadn't then done something to keep the Icarus from leaving Xathru.
Unless the Lumpy Brothers were just hunting cargoes at random, maybe working strictlyon their own.
But that one didn't wash at all. They'd known me by sight and name, and they'dknown I'd come in from Meima. And they sure as hell hadn't bought those coronaweapons off a gun-shop rack.
I was halfway through the wraparound, still turning all the questions over inmymind, when I heard a dull, metallic thud.
I stopped dead in my tracks, listening hard. My first thought was that we hadanother pressure ridge or crack; but that wasn't at all what the noise hadsounded like. It had been more like two pieces of metal clanking hollowlyagainst each other.
And near as I could tell, it had come from someplace immediately ahead of me.
I unglued myself from the deck and hurried ahead, ducking through the forwardairlock and into the main sphere, all my senses alert for trouble. No one wasvisible in the corridor, and aside from the galley/dayroom three rooms aheadon my right all the doors were closed. I paused again, listening hard, but therewas nothing but the normal hum of shipboard activity.
The first door ahead on my right was the computer room. I stepped up to it andtapped the release pad with my left hand, my right poised ready to grab for myplasmic if necessary. The door slid open—
Tera was seated at the computer, holding a hand pressed against the side ofher head. "What?" she snapped crossly, glaring at me.
"Just checking on you," I said, glancing around the room. No one else wasthere, and nothing seemed out of place. "I thought I heard a noise."
"That was my head banging against the bulkhead," she growled. "I dropped adatadisk and ran into the wall when I leaned over to get it. Is that all rightwith you?"
"No problem," I said hastily, backing out rapidly and letting the door closeon her scowl. This was twice now, counting my spectacularly unnecessary floordive back in that Meima hotel room, where I'd overreacted and made something of afool of myself.
The difference was that Ixil was already used to that sort of thing from me.
Tera wasn't, and my face was hot as I glowered my way forward.
Ixil was seated in the restraint chair when I reached the bridge, Pix and Paxnosing curiously around the bases of the various consoles in their rodent way.
"How was Nicabar?" he asked.
"Smart, competent, and apparently on our side," I told him. "Tera, unfortunately, probably now thinks I'm an idiot. Did you hear a metallicclunking noise a couple of minutes ago?"
"Not from here, no," he said, snapping his fingers twice. The two ferretsabandoned their exploration in response to the signal, scampering up his legsand onto his shoulders. "They didn't hear anything, either," he added. "Couldit have been a pressure ridge forming?"
"No, it wasn't anything like that," I said. "Tera told me she'd bumped herhead on the bulkhead. But that's not what it sounded like to me."
"Perhaps it was Shawn across the corridor from her in the electronicsworkshop,"
Ixil suggested as the ferrets headed down his legs to the deck again. "He saidhe was going to be tearing apart and cleaning one of the spare trimregulators."
"He came here? Or did he use the intercom?"
"He came here," Ixil said. "He wanted to ask you to run a decision/diagnosticon the regulators already on-line, not wanting to have one of the spares tornapartif there was any chance we might need it."
"Unfortunately, this ship has all the decision-making capabilities of apolitician up for reelection," I said. "Tera's computer back there is justthis side of utterly useless."
"Yes, he mentioned that," Ixil agreed. "I did what I could in the way of adiagnostic, then told him to go ahead."
"Fine," I said, pulling out the console's swivel stool. I sat down facingIxil, keeping the door visible at the corner of my eye. "I presume you took theopportunity to find out a little about him?"
"Of course," he said, as if there would be any doubt. "An interesting youngman, though he strikes me as something of the rebellious type. He's quite welltraveled—he went on several survey-match trips while in tech school, includingone that followed Captain Dak'ario's famous journey across the Spiral three hundred years ago."
"Sounds like a flimsy excuse to get out of real classes." I sniffed. "Whichschool was it?"
"Amdrigal Technical Institute on New Rome," he said. "Graduated fifth in hisclass, or so he says."
"Impressive, if true," I admitted grudgingly. "What was he doing on Meima?"
"He was out of work," Ixil said. "Why, he wouldn't say—he went rather evasiveevery time I tried to move us back to that topic. He did say that he wassittingin a taverno wearing his class jacket and being picked on by some kids from arival school when he caught Cameron's eye."
"Borodin, please, at least in public," I cautioned him. "That's the nameeveryone else aboard knows him by."
"Right. Sorry." He paused, an odd expression flitting across his face.
"There's one other thing that may or may not mean anything. Have you noticed Shawnseems to have a rather peculiar odor about him?"
I frowned. My first reaction was to think that that was possibly the strangestcomment Ixil had ever made, certainly in recent memory. But Ixil was anonhuman, with access to a pair of even more nonhuman outriders, and all of them haddifferent sensory ranges from mine. "No, I hadn't," I said.
"It's quite subtle," he said. "But it's definitely there. My initial thoughtwas that it might be related to a possible medical problem, the odor coming eitherfrom the illness itself or induced by medication."
I felt my throat tighten. "Or it could be coming from some other kind of drug.
The illegal type, maybe?"
"Could be," Ixil said. "Not standard happyjam, I don't think, but there areanynumber of variations I'm not familiar with." He shrugged. "Then again, itcould also be a result of something exotic he had for lunch in the port."
"Nice to have it narrowed down." Still, in all the years I'd known Ixil hisinstincts had never steered him wrong in this sort of thing. And there hadbeen the attitude change I'd noticed myself in Shawn earlier in the trip, a changethat could well have had something to do with drugs. "All right, we'll keep aneye on him. See if he smells the same tomorrow after a day of shipboard food."
"I will," he promised. "Speaking of tomorrow, I notice you've scheduled ournext fueling stop on Dorscind's World. I thought I might remind you that Dorscind'sWorld is not exactly a highlight of the average five-star tourist cruise."