Michael Flynn - Up Jim River

Dame Teffna and the two news crews fell silent. The Amazon sergeant stood away from the wall and her hand had dropped to her stunner. But she made no move to draw it.

A frozen moment passed. Then a smile blossomed on Nagarajan’s face. “No harm, Sarge. The lady and me was just showing off our jewelry.” He tucked the medallion back into Méarana’s blouse. He had barely glanced at it, but the harper suspected he had examined it quite carefully in that instant. He was a man quick with his senses. He smiled again, catlike. “Yuh need to put the killer in your eye,” he murmured so she alone could hear. “A man sees in your eye that yuh ain’t gonna stick him first, he maybe feels too cocky. I ain’t no enemy, so I tell yuh this. Never threaten your enemy and let him be. Better t’ just let him be and forget the threats.”

Méarana made the knife disappear. Nagarajan sat back in his chair. The leg once more swung over the chair arm. “So, you come in from the District, too?” he continued in a low voice. “An’ now you can’t find your way back? No worries. I got all the roads mem’rized.” He tapped his temple with a finger like a tent peg. “Oh, wait. One problemo. The memory’s inside my head, which is gonna get lopped off the next couple days. That’s why those ghouls…” He meant the news faces. “…come to gawk. Heads roll around Lafrontera like bowling balls, but when is it a head so handsome as mine?”

“I’m surprised they haven’t shortened you already,” said Méarana. “Your modesty is hard to take.”

Nagarajan guffawed and slapped the arm of the chair. “But they still wanna know what I done with the Queen’s girdle, which I ain’t telling. An’ no, before you ask, they won’t let me go if’n I do. But they’re getting tired of asking, and are just about ready to cut things short, so to speak. Tell yuh what. You’re a harper by your nails. I want yuh to sing my story, so I don’t die forever. Come back tomorrow after these ghouls are done and I tell yuh chapter an’ verse on the Exploit of the Girdle.”

“And you’ll tell me how to find the source of these medallions?”

The barbarian smiled. “Whaddaya think?”

When Méarana stood to leave, Dame Teffna did, too. She embraced each of the news faces, bidding each good fortune with their interviews. “Ta,” she said, “I shan’t stay about to have that beast sticking his paw between my breasts! My dear,” she purred to the harper as she caught up, “that must have been simply awful.”

On Josang Avenue, Méarana hailed a jitney, one of the open-sided electric cars that cruised the streets of Boditown. “Are you staying at the Hotel Clytemnestra?” Teffna asked. “May I share the taxi? Oh, thank you.” She lowered herself onto the bench beside the harper and snapped open a fan hand-painted with chrysanthemums and waved it briskly before the grill in her hood. “Terribly arid here. Would you like some lotion? This heat cannot be good for your skin.”

“I imagine,” said Méarana dryly, “that it is hotter in there than it is out here.”

The taxi driver had just settled into her seat and, hearing this remark, barked a short laugh. “One gold quarter-piece,” she said. “For the both of you together.”

Méarana opened the scrip belted to her waist, but Dame Teffna laid a hand on her wrist. “Do pa’don me, dear.” Then to the driver, “Twenty minims in Venishànghai ducats, or three-tenths of a Gladiola Bill.”

The driver made a face. “I lose on the arbitrage, ladies. Not enough foreign currency to make it worthwhile. Half a ducat. I won’t take Bills.”

“Half a ducat! My dear, that is terribly steep. Perhaps thirty minims five.”

The driver considered that. “You could walk,” she suggested.

Teffna sighed. “Oh, very well. Forty. And done.”

“Forty each,” said the driver.

The Angletaran laughed. “Done.”

The taxi jerked away from the curb and headed east on Josang. “So, you went in to see the foreign bike, did you?” the driver said conversationally. “He pretty as he looks on the news-bank? No wonder everyone wants to ‘visit’ with him. They say Wildmen have bigger sperm ejectors than most bikes. That true?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Méarana. “I went there to interview him.”

“Interview,” said the driver. “That what they call it on your world? Where you from, if you don’t mind my asking.”

“Dangchao,” said the harper.

“Angletar,” said the borked woman.

“Never heard of them. How do you handle bikes there?”

“I’m sorry,” said Méarana. “Do you mean ‘men’?”

“Is that the Gaelactic word? I guess so.”

“On Angletar, we keep them in club houses,” said Dame Teffna.

“Ours are free-range,” Méarana explained simply.

Dame Teffna turned to her. “Oh, you can’t let them run loose, dear. You must understand the distinct duties of the two sexes. Men talk about God and politics, and kill each other now and then—usually because of the talk. Women keep everyone fed and laugh at the men. That’s why we wear these borkes —so they can’t see us laughing.”

Boldly Go did not depend on tourism. Consequently, no swarm of functionaries greeted them at the hotel, and there was an interval when Méarana and Teffna stood alone in the hotel’s drop-off area. Méarana turned to the other woman and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Donovan, have you lost what little of your mind you have left?”

The Angletaran managed somehow to convey an attitude of social offense without a single part of her body showing. It was all in the posture and in the tone of voice. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

“What ‘on Earth’? Who talks like that? Why else hide under that, that body-tent? It’s an obvious way to conceal yourself.”

“A little too obvious, wouldn’t you say?” the dame murmured. “Do you believe them so obtuse that they would not ‘check under the hood’?” And so saying, the dame lifted the face-veil of her borke .

And the face was undeniably female: the cheeks were fuller and more rounded; the forehead vertical and lacking in brow bossing. The eyebrows were arched and sat above the brow ridge rather than on it. And though the mouth was wider and the chin more square than was the female norm, the diversity of humankind throughout the Spiral Arm more than covered such variations. Almost, Méarana apologized.

Except that the face was also undeniably Donovan’s. If Donovan had a sister, she would look like this. Or, more accurately, if he had a crazy old aunt in the attic. Teffna waited with an expression very much like the Fudir’s smirk for the harper to comment.

Méarana closed her eyes and took in a long, slow breath. “I saved myself five ‘bucks,’ anyway. What if they ‘look in the trunk’?”

“What do you usually find stashed away in the boot,” said the dame, lowering her face-veil once more. “Rusted old tools.”

Dame Teffna had scoured her hotel room for intrusive devices upon checking in and did so again. “No reason to suppose the authorities have any interest in ‘Teffna,’” she said, “so the odds are against the room being bugged, but I’d rather learn that precautions were unneeded than to learn that they were.”

It was a single room, tastefully done, but in that perfunctory manner that catered only to unmindful businesss travelers. There was a bed, a desk with an interface and holostage. A comfortable desk chair and a more comfortable reading chair with a gooseneck screen. A copy of the local holy book. Méarana waited until the cleansing ritual was completed before blurting out, “How did you manage it?”

Teffna sat on the edge of the bed. “You left a trail, dear. I checked with ticketing and…”