Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Irritation washed across the scarred man’s face and he grimaced. “All right,” he said, as if to himself. “I’ll ask.” Then, addressing the harper: “How did she seem to you while she was home?”

“Like… Mother. We had dinner. She attended one of my concerts. She spent a lot of time in her office, reading, writing her reports. She gave me this.” The harper took the medallion from around her neck and held it out to him.

The scarred man reached out and seized it: a simple black ceramic disk with a diamond set in its center. Below the diamond, a sinuous ruby sliver zigzagged to the rim. “It’s broken off at the tip,” he pointed out. “It used to extend beyond the rim. How like her to bestow a defective gift.”

“It’s only a memento from Thistlewaite. She often did that when she came home from a mission. But it’s her whence, not her whither.”

“Except this isn’t thistlework. They don’t shape jewels in quite this way. They prefer the gaudy and elaborate.” He handed it back to her, and the harper tucked it once more between her breasts. “Trade goods,” he said. “You’d get two, maybe two-fifty shekels in the Jehovah market. Less, if you dealt with the Bourse.”

“I showed it to jewelers in Dangchao City. I even took it over to Die Bold herself, to the Mercantile Loop in Port Èlfiuji. No one recognized the style.”

A shrug. “It’s a big Spiral Arm.” He dipped his bread once more into the beans and swirled it around. Then, with a gesture of disgust he threw the bread into the bowl. “Happy? Sad?”

“What?”

“Your mother! Did she act happy, sad, depressed, the week she was home? Afraid? Maybe she was running from something, and that’s why she didn’t tell you where she was going.”

“Mother, afraid? I wouldn’t even know what that looked like. She seemed… excited, I suppose. I asked her what, and she only said that it was something so outrageous and so wonderful that it could not possibly be true. But if it was … If it was, we need no longer fear the Confederation.”

The scarred man looked up sharply. He himself had been, at one time, an agent of the Confederation of Central Worlds, though one insufficiently devout—as the scars on his scalp testified. Her rulers were cold and ruthless—beside them the Hounds were eager puppy dogs—and he knew a moment’s unease. If the daughter had been asking around, the words she had just spoken had been dropping into any number of ears, and it was as certain as death that Those of Name would hear them eventually and take an interest. They did not believe that there should ever be anyone who did not fear Them.

The harper held out a slip of notepaper. “She left nothing but this note.”

The scarred man reacted with genuine anger and snatched the slip of paper from the young woman’s hand. “I’m no harp, girl. I don’t like being played.” He unfolded it, saw it was handwritten, and succeeded in astonishing himself. All these years flown past, and he could still recognize her handwriting.

Out on the edge , it read. Fire from the sky. Back soon.

“Fudir, what does it mean?”

The harper had again used one of his names—or he thought she had. He chose to believe that she had not called him something else. Go ahead, “Fudir,” a part of him jibed, tell her what it means.

“What do you think it means?” he asked her.

“I don’t know.’ Out on the edge.’ Perhaps she went into the Rift, or out to the Rim, or perhaps to the edge of settled space, past Krinth or Gatmander, or to the unsettled worlds of the Galactic East.”

The Fudir grunted. “Which pretty much brackets the Periphery.” He gave her back the note, and it, too, vanished into her clothing. “But it might not mean that sort of edge. It might have meant the challenge would drive her to the edge of her talents.” He waved his hand to get the Bartender’s attention and pointed to his table. The Bartender, a Jehovan who went by the office name of Praisegod Barebones, understood. Like cock’s crow, the scarred man’s first drink heralded the new day. He brought a bowl of uiscebaugh to the table and set it before him.

“I don’t know that she has an edge to her abilities,” the harper said, “or that any challenge could push her to them.”

“The more fool, she.”

“Otherwise, why write ‘back soon’? She thought this would be a simple task. But months became years. And then Gwillgi came. His visit frightened me.”

“A visit from Gwillgi would frighten anyone.”

“No. I mean, it is a big Spiral Arm, like everyone says, and it’s often weeks and weeks between stars. But she’s been gone too long now, and no one knows where, or why, or what happened to her. I thought…” And the hesitation in the harper’s voice drew his attention from the uisce bowl.

“What?”

“I thought that you would help me find her. You’re clever. You can see things.”

The scarred man stared into the bowl, from the amber reflection of whose contents he stared back. “I’m too old to travel,” he said. “Too old for adventure.” He ran a hand across the table. “But she hasn’t gone into the Rift. That far, I can conjure her meaning. If she had gone there, she would have said ‘in,’ not ‘out.’ Any Leaguesman would. It’s the Confederates who say ‘ out to the Rift.’ And now I will tell you, being as how I am so very clever, why you should not chase after her, and should leave the search to the Hounds.”

The harper leaned across the table, and the scarred man knew that whatever reason he would give this young woman would serve only to whet, not to weaken her resolve. Yet he could not let her go without a warning. “A Hound keeps in touch with the Kennel,” he said. “Always. Message drones. Swift-boats and packets. Now the Ourobouros Circuit, on those worlds with a station. Even if she’d had to entrust a message to some tramp captain streaming toward High Tara, there’s been more than enough time for that message to reach the Kennel—even from Gatmander or Krinth. And that can only mean that she can’t send a message; and that can only mean that she’s…”

“No, she isn’t. I would know it if she were.”

The scarred man said nothing for a moment. “At the very least,” he suggested, “it means she’s in an exceptionally dangerous situation. Gwillgi might go in with some chance of coming out. Not you.”

“That’s why I need you with me,” the harper insisted. “You’re a Terran. You’ve got the… the…”

“ Stritsmats ,” said the scarred man. “An old Terran word.”

“And you’re an old Terran. I could… I could pay you.”

“If I wouldn’t do it for love, why would you think I’d do it for money?”

The harper pushed away from the table and stood. “You’re right. I don’t. I thought you loved her. I thought you owed her for walking out the way you did…”

“You think too much,” the scarred man told her.

The harper made no answer, but only looked at him. She was a young woman, but those were an old woman’s eyes.

“There was a matter…” the scarred man said. “I failed the Secret Name. We were punished. A new style of paraperception.”

“Paraperception can be useful. To see independently with each eye; hear with each ear…”

“No! You don’t understand. The operation was botched. Or maybe it was deliberate. They tried to give him complete personalities. Each of us was to be a specialist—an entire team in one mind. But we’re not. It’s all turmoil up here.” He tapped his head with their finger. “Half the time we’re not even sure who I am. You need someone single-minded to help you; and the one thing we are not is single-minded.”