Instead, something came down.
Bridget ban did not expect her dilemma to be so neatly solved by a deus ex machina, but it was not the deus that surprised her. It was the machina. The Spiral Arm is vast and the Kennel thinly spread. So when her communicator announced the arrival in Peacock Roads of a ship of the Service, she did not at first believe the machine. Yet, surely it was beyond the skills of the ’Cockers to emulate the Blue Code; and it was this that finally convinced her. Greystroke, the beacon informed her—Fir Li’s chief apprentice, sent to seek a Confederate Agent on Jehovah—returning now, she assumed, with the intelligence desired.
She decided to use this unexpected crowbar to pry herself from the surface of the planet.
She sent a message in the Red Code telling him to pretend that he had come with a new assignment for her and, in case he had heard of it on Jehovah, warning him not to make that assignment the Cynthian ambush.
The Pup’s response was as minimalist as the Pup himself. It read: “?”
This led to a series of time-lagged exchanges, in the excruciating course of which they laid out a plan. Bridget ban learned to her astonishment that Greystroke, too, was in search of the Twisting Stone and had come to Peacock Junction holding the other end of the same tangled skein of events.
The coincidence did not astonish the Pup. “It was fated, Cu. You followed one end and I followed the other. The Friendly Ones used the Molnar as their woof to weave this rendezvous; but we never see their tapestry, save in hindsight.”
“The past is always inevitable,” she grumbled. “I’ll believe in yer Fate, when ye know of it aforehand.”
Peacock STC could not be unaware that deeply encrypted communications were flowing between the two ships of the Service. So Bridget ban called Pulawayo at STC and, when the elf’s visage had appeared on the comm, told him—or her—that there’d been a change of plans. “Greystroke’s brought a new case. He and I are tae rendezvous at Lunglopaddy High an’ discuss it. So I’m needing a traffic window as soon as yer folk can arrange it.”
Pulawayo made a pout. “I thought we might have another rendezvous of our own,” he said. If he meant to lure her into another ambush, it did not show on his face.
“Oh, darlin’, I’d hoped so, too,” Bridget ban replied with all the feeling she could fake. “But, Hound’s business, ye know. I’ve been tied up here with admin work on four cases while I waited…Which reminds me…Hae ye no got the STC records, e’en yet?”
The Director appeared both devastated and embarrassed. “No, they’re in such a mess. Heads will roll over this, dear, I promise.”
Bridget ban repressed a shudder, suspecting the statement as more than a metaphor. “Well, there’s nae time for it the now. The ambush is bumped tae a lower priority. Greystroke an’ I are for Xhosa Broadfield—and I cannae say more o’ that—but I’ll be back when we’ve finished our business there—say, in two or three metric months. Ochone! We gang where the Little One sends us, but the trail will wax muckle cold by then. I imagine ye’ll have the information properly organized before I return.” The last, she said in a chastising tone.
Pulawayo nodded, puppy-eager. “Oh, yes. Surely. Yes. By then. We must look like such sillies, to let our database grow corrupted like that, and the bureaucratic confusion—not to mention the diplomatic implications. We are an independent state, you know, and we can’t just turn our records over to anyone who asks.”
“Silly” was not the word that occurred to Bridget ban. She brought the conversation to a rapid and superficially friendly close before Pulawayo could lay any more excuses on the barricades. Shortly after, she received her clearance to lift for the geosynch station. Even if the ’Cockers remained uncertain about the night of her visit to Pulawayo, they would dare nothing with Greystroke now watching from the high ground. A Pup’s field office was no battle cruiser, but it had more than enough fire-power to avenge any treachery.
Never had a departure so pleased her as her departure from Peacock Junction. Hedonism, incompetence, and treachery made a deadly mix, for each quality led inexorably to the next. Just before breaking the connection with Pulawayo, the limpid eyes of the gentle boy-girl had hardened for a bare instant into black adamantine, and she had glimpsed the viper coiled within the paradise.
Lunglopaddy High was, for obscure reasons, called a “twenty-four.” It circled Peacock in a geosynchronized orbit midway between Shalmandaro and Malwachandar Spaceports. Bridget ban arrived first and waited for Greystroke in the Dapplemoon Lounge, where she watched the ballistic ships through the broad view-window. It was an early hour in the station’s cycle and the Lounge was nearly empty, which in theory should have ensured attentive service, but did not.
Several ballistic ships had decoupled from the passenger dock to fall toward the atmosphere when the Hound became aware that the Pup was sitting at the table with her.
Greystroke smiled. “Have you been waiting long?”
“A couple of hektominutes.”
“Newton is a cruel god.” He snagged a passing attendant by the sleeve and ordered a pot of tea. “Chanterberry Lace,” he said.
“Order it ‘to go,’” said Bridget ban.
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s been three and a half weeks since the Cynthians were ambushed. The trail is as cold as space. What do a few minutes matter?”
“It grows a mickle colder.”
“Hah. Did you know that ‘weeks’ and ‘months’ are old Terran tempos? The ‘month’ is how long it took their moon to make one complete circuit.”
“A month is forty metric days. What moon was ever turned in so neatly divisible a manner?”
“Fudir says the metric day is a little shorter than his Earth’s day, but that the one was based on the other, back in old Commonwealth times. The Terran day was divided into twenty-four ‘hours’ instead of the ten horae we use now, and their week had seven days.”
“A prime number? Awa’ wi’ ye! And why not a nice divisible ten?”
Greystroke shrugged. “Or twelve, like they use on the Old Planets. Fudir said there were seven moving lights in the skies of Old Earth. Each one was a god, so each one was given a day in his or her honor.”
She thought a chance assortment of planets a foolish standard against which to mark the passage of time. Too many suns crossed too many skies to privilege the motion of any one of them. “Ye ken a muckle o’ glaikit knowledge today, Grey One.”
“Oh, Fudir is the fountainhead. He can be entertaining when he puts a hand to it. And more entertaining still when he doesn’t.”
“An ye bear a regular geggie o’ folk wi’ ye.”
“Cu, you’re challenging my translator’s tolerances. Can we use Gaelactic Standard? Ah.” This he added to the attendant, who had brought a teapot and cup. “Thank you, old ’Cock.”