“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
