Episode Sixty-Five, in which Hare asks a few questions and the Captain plays her trump card

“Nancy?” Ship said. “It can’t be Nancy. We saw her die.”

“You’re dead,” I said.

“Apparently not.”

“But we watched you…I checked your body. You were gone.”

“It’s a long story,” she said. She stetched out her leg, broke a couple of seals, and pulled up a trouser leg. At first glance, the skin looked normal enough. But I’d seen this before. Her leg was a very good replacement.

“How much?”

“About seventy percent. Both legs, half my side. Not my head, though, thankfully.”

Her face hadn’t changed, not much at least. Heart shaped and light brown, with a thin nose, lively blue eyes, and a frame of short blonde hair.

“Who…?”

“You said we need to move,” she said. “We can discuss this later.”

I hesitated, then I said, “All right. Leave your weapon. And we’ll be blocking your plant.”

She stood, touched each of her companions softly, slung a small bag on her shoulder, and nodded, ready to go.

Ship’s lift was a loose soft tube that hung down from Largo’s belly. We went up, one by one, with Kral last, holding Johnny and Meissa above. When we were all aboard, Bael and I ushered everyone into the salon. Nancy moved with an odd gait, but there was nothing to show that she was mostly replacements. I noticed Basto. I increasingly saw him more as Basto with enhancements than an amalgamation of two AIs, but that may have been because I was seeing Basto’s body, not Buttercup’s frame. Basto looked the most confused. Rosalind held his hand as they came into the salon; it was impossible to tell what that meant to Basto. Nancy dropped to one of the couches, and looked as though she was about to sleep. The Captain stood near the hatch, taking it all in with a practiced eye. I brought in some refreshments, including the last of Largo’s bug juice for Kli.

“How soon to the far coast, Ship?”

“Obfuscating the best I can and taking a few detours, maybe twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. Let Bael, Kral, and me know when you’re close.”

The whole crew was mostly seated, or in the case of Johnny and Melissa, slouched, around the salon. Elibel and Kli were talking. He was showing her something on a data projection; what, I didn’t know. Kral stood off to the side, next to the billiard table.

“I think it’s time to revive Johnny and Melissa,” I said. “Kral, I’ll ask you to do that, but please keep them muzzled and secured. And keep them blinded.”

The two captives began to stir. The captain moved closer, but not too close, perched on the arm of a chair.

“Welcome back,” I said. “If you’re sufficiently revived to understand what I’m saying, please nod.”

After a moment’s hesitation, both nodded. Their plants should have been blocked, but I’ve never trusted that tech. I just hoped it was true. In any event, a residual sedative would keep them both a little slow and disoriented.

“Do you understand that you are in danger? And that there will be no opportunity to escape again?”

Both dutifully nodded.

“Excellent. I have a few questions.”

I paused. “At this point,” I said to Ship, Bael, and Kral, “they have no idea whether or not they’re alone or together. Let’s see if I can make any use of that, at least as long as they’re in the dark.”

I walked over to the captives and put a hand on each shoulder. “I want to get a little background,” I said. “And I want to know the truth. Lying will not help you. Do you know where Bresslaft is?”

Both shook their heads.

“You are certain? As I said, I do not appreciate lies.” They shook their heads again. I pressed my hands down on their shoulders, hard. Not enough to hurt much, but enough to emphasize the vulnerability of their position.

“Do you know who Bresslaft is?”

Both nodded.

“Are you working with Bresslaft?”

Both hesitated, then shook their heads.

“He appears to be telling the truth,” Bael said. “From her vitals and her reflex patterns, I can say that she isn’t.”

“I told you I don’t like lies,” I said. “Whatever happens, I’ll tell you now that you both are finished, at least in the consortium, and probably elsewhere. So let’s make this as easy as possible. Are you working with Bresslaft?”

He shook his head again, and spat. This time Melissa nodded, but there was something else in the motion. What, I couldn’t tell.

“Is Bresslaft part of the fudge trade?”

Johnny didn’t move, while Melissa slowly nodded.

“Is there a plot in the works to destabilize Forest?”

Neither moved.

“Come on. I know there is. I just want your confirmation.”

“Hare, I know what you’re trying to do, but for all the things you are, you’re not an interrogator. Your way, this will take forever.” It was the Captain.

“O’Flaherty….”

“Trust me, Trieste. I’ll get us what both of us need.”

She was already close to Johnny. She moved over to him quickly, forcefully. She cut Melissa’a audio, then she paused. She stood there for a moment, idly stroking the little ridge that ran across her forehead. Then she quickly pulled back his hood, cleared his blinder and his muzzle. She slapped him, once, and again, and then a third time.

“Hello, Johnny,” she said, and slapped him again. “Or is it Billy? That’s always been your favorite name, Billy, I think. Billy, I have to tell you: you’re stuck in a slimy, ice-cold load of giant crin-worm secretions.”

Johnny put his head back and shouted, “You are in so much trouble. You have no idea. I’m going….”

“You’ll do nothing, Billy,” she said, and slapped him again. “We’re only in trouble if your people find us, and this time nobody’s going to find us. Not until we’re ready to be found.”

“I won’t tell you anything.”

She bent over him, bunched up his collar in her hand, and looked him in the eye. “Of course you’re not. What you say now has nothing to do with me. You’re coming on a little voyage, and then we’ll see what you say and what you don’t. But before that, Melissa here will tell these good people what they need to know. You’ll just sit and listen.”

He was quiet. The Captain stepped over to Melissa and contemplated her captive.

“We’re almost ready to put down, Hare.”

“Where?”

“We’ll be hiding in plain sight.”

I hooked into Largo’s forward visuals. Below us was desert; the sea was about 40 kilometers away. Spreading out ahead across the desert floor was a city of derelict spaceships, tenders, cargo flyers, ancient pleasure craft, a few water vessels, and a number of hulks the point of which I couldn’t tell. It was a city of technological ghosts. Off to the left was a small town, a few trees, a few houses. A ridge of gray rock rose behind the town. Ship had maneuvered us to a spot above a row of Manta Rays and was deftly settling Largo between two of them.

“Now if only I can find that dead-ship transponder,” she said. “Ah, there it is. Sometimes it pays to be a collector.”

“Packrat,” Bael said.

“That too.”

Finally O’Flaherty snapped out of her reverie and pulled back Melissa’s hood.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Mizz Bean.”

“The way you said that….”

“Yea, Mizz Bean, it’s me, little Mani. Too many well-placed families sent their daughters off to your school, and mine was unfortunately one of them. At least until I told them a few things. You remember how I disappeared that winter, don’t you. Damn, how I hated you and your school.”

“I….”

“But enough of old times. I will cut to the chase, as my third grandmother used to say. I have Yattea.”

“What…?”

“Oh not here, of course. But safe, in a good place. I can assure you, by my honor, that she is not being hurt and will never be hurt. She is being cared for by three sweet, tough old witches who wouldn’t let me harm her even if I wanted to. I understand that she is having fun, and thinks that you’ve been called away on business. That’s a pretty familiar scenario, is it not, you being away on business?”

“What…?”

“Of course, there’s a good possibility that you’ll never see her again, but we’ll have to work on that.”

“What…?”

“You’re getting a little repetitious, aren’t you? I’d guess that you want to know what I want out of you. Or maybe you want to know what proof I have that I have Yattea. Or maybe both. Well, look at this.”

An image appeared before us, a girl running in a field. She was an adolescent, athough it was hard to tell her actual age. She ran toward us, laughing. She was tall, lovely, coltish, and evidently very happy. Then I could see it. Her hair was longer, and more brown than jet black. And her skin, while tanned, was definitely lighter. But her face was so similar, down to the huge green eyes….

“Bael,” the Captain said, “from what I’ve seen, you’re probably a little tired of discovering unknown relatives. But I have one more for you. This is Yattea. She’s your sister.”

To Be Continued

Episode Sixty Four, in which Taes becomes a ghost and an old friend comes calling

“Wait,” Bael said. ” My dolls. Maybe they’ve been going after Largo because they’ve been looking for my dolls.”

“What dolls? Like these?”

“No, not like these at all. Mine are much more beautiful, perfectly crafted. With little dresses. But I have a set of ten of them. My father brought them back from one of his trips. Maybe he was coming from Banyan’s. I was way too old to play with dolls the way a child would, but I loved them. They were so beautiful. He told me that they were very valuable, and that I should keep them forever, and never break up the set.”

“Only ten,” I said. “So if they follow the same pattern, number eleven is out there somewhere. Ship, are you getting this?”

“Yea, Hare. I’m thinking at it would be prudent to move Largo as soon as I get rid of these barnacles. I’m almost finished with that.”

“Think about bringing her out of orbit. We will look for a place to hide her down here. Let me know when the barnacles are gone. Kli, you said that Taes might not exist. What do you mean?”

Kli was sprawled on of the couches. He paused, probably disengaging from whatever nets, webs, and data mazes he was running in. He shook his head, and the gem-encrusted weights that hung from his ears swung back and forth. He looked up at us, then sent forth a deep, melodious sigh.

“I’ve been thinking about patterns,” he said, “ranging through available data, not really looking for anything in particular. I was looking at travel records, comings and goings from Banyan’s Hell. This place is awash with loose data.” He paused again.

“And?”

“The Duke traveled a lot. But he made a large number of trips to Banyan’s, over many years. Johnny was only there when Rosalind said he was, the same time when Ship and Hare were. But the Duke was there a lot. And can you guess who was there at the same times?”

“Kli….” I said.

“Oh, all right. It was Melissa Bean. I figured at first that they were having trysts. And the Duke did keep a little house in one of the better neighborhoods in the main settlement on Banyan’s.”

I looked at Bael. She has gone stony-faced again. She was watching Kli. I touched her hand, but she pulled it back.

“But Banyan’s Hell wasn’t the sort of place I would choose for sweet coupling, and I doubt humans would either. So I thought maybe something else was going on. I looked a little deeper and remembered that before she was a power broker on Nova, Bean was a teacher.”

“We know,” I said. “Both Bael and Melissa….”

“But before that,” he continued, “did you know that she was a scholar of history? And did you know that Nova has the most extensive collection of old-culture artifacts and data in human space?”

“Go on.”

“Bean did her main research work on Banyan’s Hell. I think she knows what those dolls are.”

“But what about Taes?”

“I’m coming to that. There are records—they’re disparate, scattered across worlds and times—that suggest the possibility of shadow creatures. They’re not clones, they’re more like, what do you call them, ghosts. But they’re ghosts of living creatures.”

“You mean that I’m the daughter of a ghost?” Bael said.

“That’s where I’m confused. If Taes is what I think he is, he could never have fathered you.”

“Our only source for the Taes-as-father story is Linda,” I said. “I wonder what from her can be believed at this point. But why do you think that Taes is one of the ghosts?”

“I cross-checked the living-ghost sitings with the presence of old-culture ruins, specifically ruins with the same traits as those those found on Banyan’s Hell. Of the 23 sitings I could find, 19 were on worlds that held those ruins. The ghosts have to be connected to that culture. But then I found a rare account—it had been a scribed pape document, one that apparently is still stored in a small vault in the Cremena at Roquelle. A few copies of those have been made, and one of those is in a little database on Bur….”

“Kli, what did it say?”

“Look at this. Here is the Duke. You can see his vital rhythms, and you can clock his movements in this motion sequence here. Now here is a bit of a similar Taes sequence.

“That’s….” Bael said slowly.

“Yea, I had to go into your data store on Largo. Sorry.”

Bael looked at him. Her muscles were tense, like those of a braennta ready to pounce.”

“Kli,” I said.

“Listen to me, my human friends—no offense meant, Bael—we have things to do. And you want to get all this sorted out. So data are meant to be free. You humans can never really understand that. At least most of you. Do you want to figure out what’s going on?”

“Bael?”

“It’s all right.”

I nodded to Kli.

“The vital rythms are nearly identical, which is expectable in a clone, at least in most cases. But the two motion sequences show a pattern, a footprint if you will, with a deviation predicted by the Roquelle pape. The pape was written a long time ago by a monk who apparently was fascinated by the living ghosts. She figured out this deviation as a way of detecting them. Taes is not a clone; Taes is a ghost.”

“So what does that tell us?”

“Scentsapproachinginalley,” Kral said. “TheysmelllikeLinda’speople.”

We would have gone into some kind of defense mode, but their sensors had most likely already registered us. So we all stayed where we were. It seemed best to let them catch us apparently unawares.

I could soon see that catching us was the furthest thing from their minds. Three men and a woman stumbled through the hole in the back wall. They all looked like they’d been through battle. Their faces were scarred and smudged. Their clothes were filthy, and the parts that weren’t armored had been were torn away. They all carried obvious weapons, but when they saw us, they discarded the weapons and collapsed on couches.

We said nothing, just stood there watching the newcomers. Finally, one of them spoke. He was a giant, well over two meters high, a huge bundle of bruised sinew. He raised a big, curly head and said. “We need water, and something stronger.”

Bael brought them a big flask of water, then motioned toward the bar.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I know who they are.” It was Basto’s frame, though from the tone, I figured that it was some vestige of Buttercup talking. The AI struggled to stand erect. “They’re killers. They were at Magda Singha.”

“We’re not killers,” the giant said wearily. “We were at Magda Singha, but….”

“That’s not what….”

“Seventy-Four,” I said, “can you hold off on this for a while?” I turned to the giant. “Again. Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“When Linda was here before, we were the back-up. We stayed outside. When Bresslaft’s people came and took Linda and the chimp frames, we obfuscated the best we could and hid in the alley. When they left, we gave chase.”

“Bresslaft? He was behind this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He stood. I could feel Bael and the Captain tense. But he only walked to the bar. He picked up a bottle of Kindness’s vintage Treg, scooped up a handful of glasses, and took both back to the couch. He poured out drinks for his companions, downed his, and poured another.

“You know,” he said, “you all probably shouldn’t be here. I can see that you’ve broken the probes that the Bresslaft crew left behind, but they’re still looking for Johnny and Melissa, and they’ll think to check back here soon.”

“Ship, what’s your progress?”

“Barnacles eliminated, heading your way. I’m thinking that I pick you all up and we swing out to one of the small coastal towns on the other side of this continent. I think we can hide Largo there. Agreed?”

I looked at Bael. She nodded.

“Yea, Ship. We’ll be ready.”

“I take it that your chase didn’t prove fruitful,” I said.

“Yea,” the giant said. “We got into a streetfight, but then they brought in flyers and were gone.”

I asked the giant about Bresslaft. They knew nothing, except that the invasion had had the hallmarks of a Bresslaft operation. They didn’t have any idea where the crew had gone.

“I have a lift at the break in Kindness’s wall,” Ship said, “I don’t want to stay here too long.”

“We’re clearing out,” I said. “You all had better move as well.”

“Johnny…?”

“Johnny’s coming with us.”

“So am I, Hare.”

It was the woman.

“Can’t you tell who I am?”

Suddenly, through all the grime, I saw her, as if for the first time. “Nancy?”

“Yea, no thanks to you.”

To Be Continued