Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 58

Lunzie caught Conigan's eye, and shrugged. The other woman grinned and shook her head: no accounting for Bias, in anything but his own field. Brilliancy hath its perks. Lunzie noticed that Jarl was watching her with a curious expression that made him seem very much the heavyworlder at the moment.

As the guards moved through the crowd, checking IDs, Jarl s.h.i.+fted until he was next to her, between her and the other team members. His voice was low enough to be covered by the uneven mutter of the crowd.

"It's none of my business, and I have none of the, er, scruples of someone like Bias, but . . . you do know, don't you, that Zebara is now head of External Security?"

She had not known; she didn't know how Jarl knew.

"We were just friends," she said as quietly.

"Security has no friends," said Jarl. His face was expressionless, but the statement had the finality of death.

"Thanks for the warning," said Lunzie.

She could feel her heart beating faster and controlled the rush of blood to her face with a touch of Discipline. Why hadn't he told her himself? Would he have told her if they'd had more time? Would he tell her at their next meeting? Or as he killed her?

She wanted to s.h.i.+ver, and dared not. What was going on here?

By the end of the works.h.i.+ft the next day, she was still wondering. All the way back to their quarters, Bias had made barbed remarks about overs.e.xed female research-

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ers until Conigan finally threatened to turn him in for harra.s.sment. That silenced him, but the team separated in unhappy silence when they arrived. The morning began with a setback in the research; someone had mistakenly wiped the wrong data cube and they had to re-enter it from patient records. Lunzie offered to do this, hoping it would soothe Bias, but it did not.

"You are not a data entry clerk," he said angrily. "You're a doctor. Unless you are responsible for the data loss, you have no business wasting your valuable time re-entering it."

"Tell you what," said Tailler, putting an arm around Bias's shoulders, "why don't we let Lunzie be responsible for scaring up a data clerk? You know you don't have time to do that. Nor do I. I've got surgery this morning and you're supposed to be checking the interpretation of those cardiac muscle cultures. Conigan's busy in the lab, and Jarl's already over at the archives, while Lunzie doesn't have a scheduled procedure for a couple of hours."

"But she shouldn't be wasting her time," fumed Bias. Tailler's arm grew visibly heavier and the smaller biologist quieted.

"I'm not asking her to do it," said Tailler, giving Lunzie a friendly but commanding grin. "I'm asking her to see that it's done. Lunzie's good at administrative work. She'll do it. Come on. Let's leave her with it; you don't want to be late."

And he steered Bias away even as the biologist said, "But she's a doctor . . ." one last time. Tailler winked over his shoulder at Lunzie, who grinned back.

It was easy enough to find a clerk willing to enter the data. Lunzie stayed to watch long enough to be sure tile clerk really understood his task, then went on to her first appointment. She waited until well after the local noon to break for her lunch, hoping to miss Bias. Sure enough, he'd already left the dining hall when she arrived, but Conigan and Jarl were eating together. Lunzie joined them.

"Did you get the data re-entered?" asked Jarl, grinning.

Lunzie rolled her eyes. "I did not, I swear, enter it

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myself. Thanks to Tailler, and a clerk out of the university secretarial pool, it was no problem. Just checked, and found that it's complete, properly labelled, and on file."

Jarl chuckled. "Tailler told us when we came in for lunch about Bias's little fit. He says Bias is like this by the second week of any expedition, to Diplo or anywhere else. He's worked with him six or seven times."

"I'm glad to know it's not just my aura," said Lunzie.

"No, and Tailler says he's going to talk to you about last night. Seems there's some reason Bias is upset by women a.s.sociates having anything to do with local males."

"Alpha male herd instinct," muttered Conigan.

Jarl shook his head. "Tailler says not. Something happened on one of his expeditions, and he was blamed for it. Tailler wouldn't tell us, but he said he'd tell you, so you'd understand."

Lunzie did not look forward to that explanation. If Bias had peculiar notions, she could deal with them; she didn't have to be coaxed into sympathy. But she suspected that avoiding Tailler would prove difficult. Still, she could try.

"I'm having dinner with Zebara tonight," she said. "Bias will just have to live with it."

Jarl gave her a long look. "Not that I agree with Bias, but is that wise? You know?"

"I know what you told me, but I also know what Zebara did for me over forty years ago. It's worth embarra.s.sing Bias, and worth risking whatever you fear."

"I don't like anyone's Security, external, internal, or military. Never been one yet that didn't turn into someone's private enforcement agency. You've had a nega-'tive contact with heavyworlders before. You have a near relative in Fleet: reason enough to detain and question you if they're so minded."

"Not Zebara!" Lunzie hoped her voice carried conviction. Far below the surface, she feared precisely this.

"Just be careful," Jarl said. "I don't want to have to risk my neck on your behalf. Nor do I want to answer a lot of questions back home if you disappear."

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Lunzie almost laughed, then realized he was being perfectly honest. He had accorded her the moderate respect due a fellow professional, but he felt no particular friends.h.i.+p for her (for anyone?) and would not stir himself to help if she got into trouble. She could change quickly from "fellow professional" to "major annoyance" which in his value system would remove her from his list of acquaintances.

To add to her uneasiness, Tailler did indeed manage to catch her before she left the center and insisted on explaining at length the incident which had made Bias so sensitive to "relations.h.i.+ps" between research staff and locals. A sordid little tale, Lunzie thought: nothing spectacular, nothing to really justify Bias's continuing reaction. He must have had a streak of prudery before that happened to give him the excuse to indulge it.

Chapter Six.

Dupaynil, hustled through the scarred and echoing corridors of the transfer station to the control center where the Claw's captain met him with the suggestion that he "put a leg in it" and get himself out to the escort's docking bay, had no chance to think things over until he was strapped safely into the escort's tiny reserve cabin. He had not been pa.s.senger on anything smaller than a light cruiser for years; he had never been aboard an escort-cla.s.s vessel. It seemed impossibly tiny after the Zaid-Dayan. His quarters for however long the journey might be was this single tiny s.p.a.ce, a minute slice of a meager pief hardly big enough to lie down in. He heard a loud clang, felt something rattle the hull outside, and then the escort's insystem drive nudged him against one side of his safety restraints. The little s.h.i.+p had artificial gravity, of a sort, but nothing like the overriding power that made Main Deck on the Zaid-Dayan feel as solid as a planet.

The glowing numbers on the readout overhead told him two standard hours had pa.s.sed when he felt a curious twinge and realized they'd s.h.i.+fted into FTL drive. Although he'd had basic training in astrogation, he'd never used it, and had only the vaguest idea what

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FTL travel really meant. Or where, in real terms, they might be. Somewhere behind (as he thought of it) was the cruiser he had left, with its now-familiar crew and its most attractive captain. Its very angry and most attractive captain. He wished she had not been so transparently suspicious of his motives. She was no planet pirate nor agent of slavers. She had nothing to fear from him. And he would gladly have spent more time with her. He let himself imagine the nights they could have shared. __ "Sir, we're safely in FTL, if you want to come up to Main."

Dupaynil sighed as the voice over the com broke into that fantasy and thumbed the control. "I'll be there."

He had messages to send, messages he had had no time to send from the transfer station. And with the angry Commander Sa.s.sinak sitting on the other end of the block, so to speak, he would not have sent diem from the station anyway. He re-discovered what he had once been taught about escort-cla.s.s vessels in a few miserable minutes. They were small, overpowered for their ma.s.s, and understaffed. No one bunked on Main but the captain who was the pilot. Crew consisted of a round dozen: one other officer, the Jig Executive, eleven enlisted, from Weapons to Environmental. No cook: all the food was either loaded prepackaged, to be reconst.i.tuted and heated in automatic units, or synthesized from the Environmental excess.

; Dupaynil shuddered; one of the best things about the Zaid-Dayan had been the cooking. With fall crew and ,,jme supercargo, the escort had to ration water: limited :j bathing. The head was cramped: the slots designed to ;K.discourage meditation. There was no gym but the un-^ even artificial gravity and s.h.i.+plong access tubing offered ;; -Opportunity for' informal exercise. For those who liked r ^climbing very long ladders against variable G. Worst of J: all, the s.h.i.+p had no 1FTL link.

" 'Course we don't have IFTL," said the captain, a Major Ollery whose face seemed to brighten every time

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Dupaynil found something else to dislike. "We don't have a Ssli interface, do we?"

"But I thought . . ." He stopped himsetf in mid-argument. He had seen a briefing item, mention of the s.h.i.+p cla.s.ses that had IFTL, mention of those which would not get it because of "inherent design constraints." And escorts were too small to carry a Ssli habitat. "That . . . that stinkerl" he said, as he realized suddenly what Sa.s.sinak had done.

"What?" asked Ollery.

"Nothing." Dupaynil hoped his face didn't show how he felt, torn between anger and admiration. That incredible woman had fooled him. Had fooled an experienced Security officer whose entire life had been spent fooling others. He had had a tap on her communications lines, a tap he was sure she'd never find, and somehow she'd found out. Decided to get rid of him. And how in Mulvaney's Ghost had she managed to fake an incoming IFTL message? With that originating code?

He sank down on the one vacant seat in the escort's bridge, and thought about it. Of course she could fake the code, if she could fake the message. That much was easy, if the other was possible. But nothing he'd been taught, in a long and devious life full of such instruction, suggested that an IFTL message could be faked. It would take ... he frowned, trying to think it through. It would take the cooperation of a Ssli: of two Ssli, at least. How would the captain of one s.h.i.+p enlist the aid of the Ssli on another? What land of hold did Sa.s.sinak have on her resident Ssli? It had never occurred to him that the Ssli were capable of anything like friends.h.i.+p with humans. Once installed, the sessile Ssli never experienced another environment, never "met" anyone except through a computer interface. Or so he'd thought.

He felt as if he'd sat down on an anthill. He fairly itched with new knowledge and had no way to convey it to anyone. Ssli could have relations.h.i.+ps with humans beyond mere duty. Could they with other races? With Wefts? Were Ssli perhaps telepathic? No one had suspected that. Dupaynil glanced around the escort bridge and saw only human faces, now bent over their own

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work. He cleared his throat, and the captain looked

"Do you . . . mmm . . . have any Wefts aboard?"

An odd expression in reply. "Wefts? No, why?" Then before he could answer, OHery's face cleared. "Oh! You've been with Sa.s.sinak, I know. She's got a thing about Wefts, doesn't she? They say it started back in the Academy. She had a Weft lover or something. That true?" Ollery's voice had the incipient sn.i.g.g.e.r of those who hope the worst about their seniors.

Dupaynil suppressed a surge of rage. As a Security officer, he listened to gossip professionally; idle gossip, malicious gossip, juicy gossip, boring gossip. He found it generally dull, and sometimes disgusting: a necessary but unpleasant part of his career. But here, applied to Sa.s.sinak, it was infuriating.

"So far as I know," he said as smoothly as he could, "that story was started by a cadet expelled for stealing and harra.s.sing women cadets." He knew the truth of that; he'd seen the files. "Commander Sa.s.sinak, and"-he emphasized the rank a little, intentionally, and enjoyed seeing Ollery's face pale-"keeps her s.e.x life in her own cabin, where it belongs, and where I intend to leave it."

A m.u.f.fled snort behind him meant that either someone else thought the captain had been out of line, or that Dupaynil's defense implied personal knowledge. He left that alone, too, and hoped no one would ask.

Silence settled over the bridge; he went on with his thoughts. Telepathic Wefts, and a s.h.i.+p's captain who could sometimes talk that way with them. He'd seen Ae reports on Sa.s.sinak's first tour of duty. A Ssli who-he suddenly remembered something from the tour before he joined the Zaid-Dayan. Sa.s.sinak had reported it as part of her testimony before the Board of Inquiry. Her Ssli, this same Ssli, had taken control of the s.h.i.+p momentarily and flipped it in and out of FTL s.p.a.ce. A move which she had described as "unprecedented, but Undoubtedly the reason I am here today."

He was beginning to think that Fleet knew far too little about the capabilities of Ssli. But he had no way to out more at the moment so he moved his concen-