Jerusha held her breath, knowing the line would hold, but still instinctively afraid of disaster. The ship began to crack and groan in turn as its immovable mass surrendered to the irresistible force of the winch’s power—and finally it began to rise.
Deckhands leaped forward to drag the two trapped workers free as the ship began to lift clear. But the two men at the winch kept cranking, and as the rest of the crowd watched in murmuring awe, the ship rose farther. The float that was wedged under the pier’s edge snapped and broke in two, ripping free with a spray of splintered wood. The ship lunged and bucked against the line; gradually stabilized again as the relentless pull lifted it even higher, until it was back in position overhead—and still the line held.
Jerusha tore her own gaze from the ship, to watch the injured workers carried away toward the ramp that rose into the city, toward the hospital. She looked back again as someone embraced her suddenly, awkwardly, before hurrying on past, going after the injured workers.
“Littleharbor’s kinsman,” Fairhaven said, indicating one of the victims, and the man who had just hugged her. Jerusha nodded mutely, wondering with a familiar, morbid weariness whether the two workers could be healed or even helped in any meaningful way by the primitive medical treatment they had now. Miroe had done his best to share what medical training he had with the locals; but without sophisticated equipment and diagnosticators to back it up, his modern methods were hardly more effective than the herbal-remedies-mixed-with-common-sense the Tiamatans had evolved on their own.
“Commander—?” Someone’s voice caught at her hesitantly.
She turned back, finding a crowd of Summers gathered around her. “What is it?” she said.
“How is it possible?” the woman who had spoken asked; asking, Jerusha realized, for them all. “What sort of string is this you carry, that can bear the weight that snapped a chain?”
“It’s called monomolecular line,” she answered. “It’s extremely strong. They say it could lift the entire city of Carbuncle without snapping. It’s from offworld.” She watched their faces, expecting their eyes to glaze over with disinterest as she said those final words … just as they always had, and probably always would. She had come to believe that masochism must be an inherited trait among the Summers; that they were somehow instinctively opposed to making their lives any easier.
But they only came closer, touching the line hesitantly, speculatively, murmuring among themselves about the strength, the lightness, the countless possible uses for netting, bindings, rigging … on a farm … in a cottage. That this was better. All the things that the Queen and her College of Sibyls and the Winter entrepreneurs had been trying to tell them, show them, force on them—forcing it down their throats, when all that had done was make the Summers retch. When they should have been letting those things speak for themselves … letting the Summers think for themselves. Showing, and not telling …
“Is this something the Winters have learned to make?” a large, red-bearded man asked, almost grudgingly.
“Not yet,” Jerusha said. “Someday they will.” She looked down, trying to conceal the sudden inspiration that struck her. “But—there’s a supply of it left in the old government warehouses. If you want it, maybe I could arrange to make it available. …” She shrugged, trying not to sound too eager, not to look as though it mattered to her.
The Summers glanced at each other, their expressions mixed, as if they were trying to gauge one another’s response: whether the person next to them would somehow be the first to get a quantity of the new line, and an advantage over them, all at the same time.
“What would you ask for it?” someone murmured.
She almost said, “Nothing”; stopped, thinking fast. The Summers made most of their own equipment, and preferred barter to the city’s offworlder-based credit system. “We can talk a trade,” she said, and saw their faces begin to come alive as she answered them in their own way. “Come up to the warehouse whenever you finish your work. One of my Summer constables will be there to speak with you.” She saw them nodding, saw their eyes, and knew that sooner or later, some of them would come. And then, with any luck, more would. Shown, not told … There were other things in the warehouses, things that she could have put to casual use in the Summers’ presence, letting them see for themselves that their way of doing things was not the only way, not even necessarily the best. Lost in thought, she scarcely felt the pain of her overtaxed body as she started back up the ramp toward the city.NUMBER FOUR Foursgate
“Wake up, you stinking hero. This is no time for sleep—”
Police Commander BZ Gundhalinu gasped and came awake in utter darkness, the sourceless words echoing in his head like a dream. “Wha—?” Dreaming. . . he had been dreaming. But it was a woman’s face he had been dreaming of, as pale as moonlight, echoed in blue, her arms reaching out to him….
He rolled toward the edge of the bed, groping for the light, the time, the message function on his bedside table; groping for whatever had wakened him so rudely from the sodden sleep of exhaustion. He had not gotten back to the apartment from the latest in the seemingly endless series of fetes and celebrations honoring him until well after local midnight. He could not possibly have been asleep for more than two or three hours. Who in the name of a thousand gods—?
He found the lamp base, slapped it with his hand—but no light came up. He realized then that he could see nothing at all, not even shadows against the night, the hidden form of a window. His hands flew to his face—rebounded without touching it from the polarized security shield locked in place over his head.
He swore, scrambling out from under the covers on his hands and knees; felt strong arms—more than one set of them—lock around him, jerking him back. He heard the unmistakable crack of a stunner shot in the same instant that the hit impacted against his chest, and shut off his voluntary nervous system. He collapsed in the bedding, paralyzed but completely conscious, furiously aware that he was stark naked, because he had been too exhausted to throw on a sleep shirt before falling into bed.
The hands rolled him roughly onto his back; he heard muttered speech distorted by the shield’s energy field. What do you want–? His slack lips would not form the words that he needed to say—needing desperately to have that much effect on his body, or his fate. He could not swear, could not even moan.
He felt their hands on him again, manhandling him with ruthless efficiency; realized with a sense of gratitude that was almost pathetic that they were wrapping his nerveless body in a robe. They lifted him off the bed, dragging him across the room and toward the door.
Gods, kidnapped—he was being kidnapped. He struggled to control his panic, the only thing left over which he had any control at all; trying to keep his mind working, trying to think. What did they want? “You stinking hero,” they’d called him. Ransom then, terrorism, information about the stardrive, Fire Lake—? Stop it. No way to guess that, he’d probably find out soon enough. Concentrate. What do you already know? He didn’t know how many of them there were, where they were taking him—he grunted as he was dumped unceremoniously into the cramped floorspace of some kind of vehicle, and felt his captors climb in around him. He felt the vehicle rise, carrying them all to gods-only-knew what destination.