There were five at the table, speaking in that desultory way of chance acquaintances. Drink and smoke and crowding and craft had placed them together. They spoke of ship arrivals and departures; of the quality of the drinks or the inhalations. The weather came in for much debate, not only the electric potential around the Jehovah Interchange and the local speed of space, but also the mundane weather planet-side. It looked like rain.
“I saw a storm once,” Captain January told his companions. “A dust storm. Maybe seven, eight weeks back, it was. It covered half the planet, and the lightning flashed like popcorn.” It was a big Spiral Arm, with a lot of planets, and nothing has ever been seen or heard but that someone else hasn’t seen or heard a bigger. No one disputed January’s bragging rights; but Micmac Anne, sitting beside him, recalled that the storm had covered only a quarter of the southern hemi sphere. How long, she wondered, before raconteurial evolution produced a version that blanketed the entire world?
She could not recall that escape without a shudder. She had seen the lightning spike upward five or six leagues from the cloud bank, to ground in the solar wind itself. It had licked each of the boats like the tongue of an indigo snake. She studied Amos under lowered lids and sought refuge from what-might-have-been in a tankard of beer. He could laugh about it; but he had only lived through it. He hadn’t had to watch.
The man on January’s left had entered a world where none could follow, his face nestled in his arms on the table. From time to time, he roused himself and spoke. “Had me ’n ancestor on Die Bold, praise be,” he announced in a local accent, and the table chuckled. Who did not have an ancestor on the Old Planets? “Lef’ me a legacy,” he went on. “Got a ’ficial notice, an’ all. Lord knows I could use ut.” His hand snaked out and pulled to him the hose from which he sucked the smoke of his own particular fantasy. Air bubbled through the huqa, cooling the smoke, lying to the lungs. He exhaled slowly, contentedly, and the table filter gathered in the brume and it was no more. “There’s this guy there, on Die Bold,” he explained. “He can sennit t’me, God willin’, but he needs two thousan’ ’n Gladjola—’n Glad-i-o-la—Bills t’ file th’ right papers.” The man’s fingers moved restlessly, playing with the hose. “Fren’s ’r helpin’ raise th’ bills.” He paused hopefully, then added, “M’ fren’s can share the ’heritance whennit comes, God willing.”
The others looked to one another and grinned. He had no friends here. Not for so transparent a ruse as that.
Another of the tablemates, a woman as thin as a willow branch, mahogany-dark with blue eyes and bright yellow hair, wondered aloud how many “gladdys” the enterprising Die Bolder had already snared from fools such as this one. “It doos not take mooch,” she assured the others, her Alabaster origin revealed by her accent. “He oonly needs to fool soom o’ the pipple soom o’ the time. Small change, boot he meks it oop in voloome.”
“Someday,” said the fine-featured man who wore a shirt of many colors, “there really will be a legacy discovered, and none of the heirs will believe it.” Lamplight glittered off his jewelry as he waved a dismissive hand.
Their banter was interrupted by a giant. Twenty-one hands tall with shoulders broad to match. Red, shoulder-length tresses entwined with glass balls of various colors. The scar that crossed his face should not by rights have left as much nose behind as it had. This apparition leaned his fists on the table. “I’m looking for a man,” he said without preamble.
“Aren’t we all,” said the mahogany woman to general laughter.
The fine-featured man studied the newcomer with interest. “Any man in particular?” he asked.
The smoke-drunk native began to snore gently.
The giant looked around the room, studied the people at the table, leaned closer, and lowered his voice. “The O’Carroll of New Eireann.”
The fancy man and the mahogany woman shook their heads. January scowled and Anne, who had picked up some notion of Eireannaughta politics in their brief stopover there, said, “Who wants to know?” She had it from Colonel-Manager Jumdar that this O’Carroll had been an assassin and a rebel whose death was sought by many.
“Sweeney. He’ll know the name—aye, an’ the nose. Should ye be runnin’ into him here…” And the giant again scanned the Bar. “If ye be sayin’ him, tell him the clans o’ th’ Southern Vale wait his retarn an’ th’ overthrow o’ the ICC tyranny. Those wards, exactly.”
As Sweeney straightened, January muttered, “I’d overthrow the ICC myself, if I could.”
The giant cocked his head. “And what foight is it o’ yers?”
“They took something of mine. A dancing stone. They’ll sell it for me, they said. I’d get a finder’s fee, they said. I’ve got a paper signed by Jumdar. But I don’t trust them.”
Micmac Anne laid her hand on his arm. “Hush, Amos. They fixed our ship.”
“They do have a way,” the giant said, “of coming into things that don’t belong t’ them.” And so saying, he departed to inquire at the next table.
The fancy man watched the departure. “He’s not going about his quest very discreetly. Or is a loud whisper what passes for stealth on his simple world?”
“The Eireannaughta,” said Anne, “are rather a straightforward lot.”
The mahogany woman raised her brows. “A dancing stoon? What iss this tell?” The others clamored to hear the story and January recounted, with relatively little embellishment, his discovery in Spider Alley. “And I signed it over to Jumdar,” he concluded. His ruddy face beamed as if happy that he had done so. “I don’t know what came over me, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it sits in the ICC vaults on New Eireann.”
“Or it’s oon Gladioola by now,” said the Alabastrine.
January shook his head. “No, they’ll send it all the way to Old ’Saken. I hear Lady Cargo is a collector of antiquities. Gladiola’s in the wrong direction, and there hasn’t been time yet for a message to reach ’Saken and a courier ship arrive.”
“Woodn’t this Joomdar send it right oof?”
“I don’t think she could spare a ship. She’d already sent two troop carriers on to Hawthorn Rose just before we got there, and needed the other two to keep order on the planet.”
The man in the colorful shirt asked, “Do you plan to go back for those other…What’d you call them? Immovable Objects?”
January turned to him. “If I could, they wouldn’t be bloody well immovable, now would they?” His vehemence surprised the others. He finished his ale and set the pot down with emphasis. “I shouldn’t have made that deal,” he said again. “I’ve good mind to go there and demand the Dancer back. Damned thieves, that’s what the ICC is.” He said that a little too loudly, for several men in ICC uniforms at nearby tables frowned in his direction.
“I think we’re well shut of it,” said Micmac Anne, but she wouldn’t say why.
“Maybe with better equipment,” said the fancy man thoughtfully, “they’d not be so immovable.”
“They’re guarded by the Irresistible Force,” January reminded him.
The fancy man shrugged, as if to say that irresistible forces were a ducat the dozen and he dealt with them handily every day.