Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

The scarred man rustled his own lunch: daal and baked beans and sautéed mushrooms, with scrambled eggs and cold, fatty bacon drawn from the cold well in the pantry. Olafsdottr recoiled from this concoction when he brought it to the refectory.

“Why?” asked the Fudir. “How do you break your fast?”

Olafsdottr toyed with her teaser, remaining out of reach of her prisoner. “What any sensible one eats. A soft-boiled egg enthroned on a cup with its large end sheared off, a small plate of fruits of varied colors—green melon, yellow pineapple, white wintermelon—arranged as to best effect. A cup of pressed coffee thick enough to stand a spoon upright.”

The Fudir regarded her curiously. “I would think espresso would be the last thing you would need. No wonder you always seem so wired. You should try Terran food someday.”

She regarded his lunch with disfavor. “Perhaps. Someday.”

“So, it’s been a quiet couple of days?”

“With you bound in bunk, how could it be other?”

Well , said the Sleuth internally, Rigardo-ji would not have taken her on by himself. He’s lying doggo.

As from a distant room, Inner Child heard the muffled sound that had bounced past the scarred man’s head several times during his detention. A glance at the courier showed that she, too, heard.

“What’s that noise?” the Fudir asked, twisting his head as if to locate it. “Something wrong with the ship? Maybe we ought to lay up for repairs here in Megranome.”

Olafsdottr smiled slowly, held it for a moment, then allowed it to fade as slowly. “Always carping the diem, my sweet. Perhaps you have set something rolling about the ship to convince me to stop for repairs and so give you an opportunity to escape. There would be no such escape, but I will withhold the opportunity and save you the frustration.”

“I did all this while I was tied up?” Donovan said.

“Nu-nu-nu, sweet. Great deeds await you on Henrietta. Tomorrow,” she added with a sniff, “make a different meal. This one stinks.”

But the mal odour lingered all day and the circulators could do nothing to dissipate it. By the next day’s breakfast both Donovan and Olafsdottr had drawn the same conclusion, very nearly at the same time.

“Not your food,” said Olafsdottr. “Stink come elsewhere.”

Donovan wrinkled his nose. “There is something familiar about it.”

“Agreed. But the nose is the most easily deceived of organs. It remembers well, but will not reveal those memories. Does not one of your shards have memory?”

Donovan was not sure how much Olafsdottr knew of his condition, but saw no reason to deny it. “The Pedant. But he remembers facts, not sensations.”

The Confederal sniffed. “Perhaps that which broke loose has caused something to burn out. Yet, it does not have the tang of burning.”

“It has the smell of rot. Perhaps the protein vats have gone bad.”

Olafsdottr viewed him with suspicion. “If you have sabotaged our food supply, it will be a long, hungry time to Henrietta. You very naughty boy, slip between the quanta of my notice.”

“We could check the vats.”

“We? I should let you near the vats?”

“Because, darling, you won’t go check them yourself while leaving me free run of the ship.”

The Confederal stood upright from her post at the doorway. “Could tie you up again, but too much bother. Put away breakfast things and come with me, and we see what new surprise you prepare.”

The protein vats were hermetically sealed. In them grew mounds of flesh cloned from highly regarded ancestors known as “esteemed cells.” The judicious metering of flavorings and odorants imparted the likeness and even the texture of poultry and pork, of fish and beef, of legume and root. “Like begets like,” chemist-wallahs sang, and so, fed upon wastes, the “mother” deep in the heart of each vessel enrobed itself in tissues like unto itself, to be shaved off, harvested, pressed, pumped to the molder, and served.

The vat room was inboard of the alfven drivers and forward of the impulse cage. The space was cramped and pantry-cool. Despite the seals, odors slipped through the seams and joints and teased the nose with the rich, earthy scent of potato and carrot, with the iron aroma of beef, with the dank stench of fish.

Beneath it all the sweetish smell of something else.

The ship’s architect had not supposed that pilots en route would have much reason to crawl around the vat room. Fresh bulk canisters were installed via external cargo doors at farmers’ markets at the hoop stations. But neither was the room nonnegotiable, since a pilot might need on occasion to refasten a hose or hand-close a valve. Olafsdottr eased matters a bit by reducing the strength of the gravity grids in the vat room by two-thirds, but she still crowded close behind him.

The stink grew worse behind the fish vat, and this was not due entirely to the faux-catfish accumulating inside it. Squeezing between it and the neighboring legume vat, Donovan spied one of the smuggler’s secret rooms, now wide open and lit. He paused in his contemplation to consider what he might tell his captor.

Knowledge is power,said the Pedant. Keep secret what we know.

On the other hand, said the Silky Voice, there are tactical benefits to knowing that your opponent knows what you know.

Ow, Silky! My head hurts.

It may need all of us together to get through this, said the young man in the chlamys. That right, Sleuth?

Some data are still lacking. Add the facts together and there is still a hole in the middle, but …

“Ya, but.” The Terran withdrew from his position and sat under Olafsdottr’s calculating gaze. “What is it, my sweet?” she said. “You can tell Ravn.”

Donovan turned to her. “Follow me,” he said, “but keep your eyes peeled for someone else. We’re not alone on this ship.”

“Ah. I had begun to wonder.”

There was a torque wrench clipped to the fish vat for use in turning valves. Olafsdottr said nothing while he unfastened it, and that silent acquiescence to his arming was the loudest thing the Confederal had said so far.

“This is a smuggler’s ship,” the Fudir said, “and it’s honeycombed with secret rooms, passages, and caches. When you hijacked it, the smuggler was aboard, drunk, in one of those rooms. Probably this one. He was afraid to act alone—”

“A man of much wisdom, then.”

“So he solicited my help to retake the ship.”

“And, of coorse, you tendered it. Ooh. I knew you had been a nooty buoy. What befell, then, seeing I am still captain of your fate?”

“He said he knew of a weapon aboard. Something the People of Foreganger were sending to assassinate the Molnar over a bit of piracy and massacre—”

Olafsdottr snorted. “The difference between the People’s Navy and the Cynthian pirates is but the number and quality of the ships at their disposal. But say on.”

“I was supposed to distract you, and he would shoot you from behind.”

Donovan did not elaborate on that and waited to see how the Confederal would react.

Olafsdottr regarded him with the stillness of a serpent. The white of her eyes and teeth, so prominent against her coal-black skin, took on some of the seeming of ice. “So,” she said at last, and patted him on the cheek. “You are a good buoy, after all. When all is said and done, and the struggle is ended, I will personally escort you home and see that you are buried with great honor.” She gestured with her teaser. “Lead on.”