Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

They had passed the city limits—unofficial, marked only by the way the buildings stopped—and the land had gone from the low scrub of the coastline to the long hills of the high plains. He had seen the transition a hundred times before, but he caught his breath yet again as the jigg topped the first big rise, and he could look out across the green-and-gold land. It was mostly flaxen and flowergrass, the flaxen distinguishable by the larger seedheads that bowed the heavy stalks into graceful arcs, but here and there he could see the bright blue patches that were daybeans in flower, or the low, dark green clumps of blue pomme bushes. This close to Bonemarche, the land was flagged for the local gatherers, the bright pennants, each one marked with the name and symbol of a Stiller mesnie , flickering in the steady breeze. Hara’s crops could not, generally speaking, be cultivated successfully—they seemed interdependent in ways the indigenes had never had the population nor the need to determine—but the mesnie s were careful of their land and jealous of their privileges. There were well-worn paths through the best acreage, and as the jigg topped the next rise, Tatian could see a gathering party clustered around a wood-bodied draisine, sorting blue pomme for the markets. Redbirds, Hara’s largest land animal, circled overhead, and he was not surprised to see that netting had been spread over some of the best-looking bushes. The Traditionalists argued against the practice, saying that netted bushes had a poorer crop the following year, but most mesnie s did it anyway, rotating from stand to stand. Bluepomme was too much of a staple crop, salable to other indigenesas well as off-world, not to take the chance.

“Did you get what you needed?” Reiss asked at last, raising his voice to carry over the whine of the jigg’s motor and the rush of the transports in the fast lane.

“Partly.”

“Starli’s good people.”

“I still need parts,” Tatian said. “Anyone you’d recommend at the port?”

Reiss shrugged, not taking his hands from the steering bar. “You’re better connected there than I am. I usually end up buying from Guinard’s.”

Guinard’s boasted of being the only tech supply house on Hara with multiple licenses; it was correspondingly expensive. Tatian sighed again. That meant he had the choice of paying Guinard’s prices or talking to Prane Am, and neither was particularly appealing. For a moment, he wondered if there was any point in talking to Eshe Isabon or Shraga Arsidy, but dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had formed. All off-worlders guarded their sources of supply jealously; even his closest friends would be reluctant to reveal their company’s secrets to an outsider. Am, at least, was her own agent.

The starport itself lay on the flat land of the first great plateau: barren land, by Haran standard, good for nothing but the ubiquitous drift-grass. The indigenes mixed its fibers into their bricks, strengthening the coarse clay. Stiller was rich in drift-grass, if nothing else. They had easily been able to spare the land for the port, and in any case, Tatian thought, they had been well paid. He could see the towers of the docking cradles over the roofs of the support buildings, top lights blazing red and white even in the daytime. He counted the reds as the jigg turned onto the approach lane: seven shuttles loading, which meant at least seven bulk carriers in orbit overhead. It was definitely getting close to Midsummer, and the first big deliveries from the mesnie s; he only hoped he hadn’t left his repair too long.

Reiss pulled the jigg to a stop in the shade of the Central Administration building. “Do you want me to wait?” he asked.

Tatian shook his head. “No. Take your friend home, and then tell Derry what’s happened. Tell her to put some sort of plausible excuse on record, just in case someone decides to check up on us.”

“But you already paid the mosstaas ,” the fem said, sounding startled, and then looked as though %e wished %e hadn’t spoken.

“I’m more concerned about IDCA,” Tatian said, still looking at Reiss. The younger man nodded, his expression for once somewhat chastened. “I want it taken care of, Reiss.”

“I will, baas ,” the younger man said. At his gesture, the fem scrambled forward into the passenger seat, and he touched the throttle again. The jigg pulled decorously away from the curb, and Tatian stepped into the sudden cool of the Administration building.

Prane Am worked for the Port Authority itself, in the larger of the two repair facilities. Rather than use the maze of tunnels that connected the buildings, Tatian cut across the almost empty staging lot, blinking again at the heat and the gathering clouds. In a few weeks, this lot and the dozen loading bays it serviced would be filled to capacity, and draisines and shays would be backed up on the access roads, waiting their turn to unload. At the moment, though, only about half the bays were open; shays were drawn up to the platforms where off-worlders and indigenes directed the machines that moved the cargo. He surveyed them with a professional eye—Kerendach had been doing a steady out-of-season business for a while now, so their presence was to be expected, but what DTS was doing with a cargo that size this time of year was beyond him, and he made a mental note to check up on them once he got back to the office.

He was sweating freely by the time he reached Repair One, and he thought he heard a distant rumble of thunder: the afternoon storms were arriving as usual. He ducked through the narrow doorway, pushing hard against the stiff seal, and stopped just inside to get his bearings. For once, all the internal partitions had been folded back, opening up the full central volume. In that space, a shuttle hung, suspended from a metal cradle, dwarfing even the biggest cargo movers, its one extended wing almost touching the wall above his head. The exoskeletons that crawled across its surfaces and along the cradles looked almost human-sized by comparison. There were three of them in use, clustered around the shuttle’s steering jets. He stared up at them, shading his eyes against the cold glare of the working lights, and wondered which was Am. Before he could find an internal systems port, however, a speaker crackled on the wall behind him.

“Tatian? Is that you?”

“Hello, Am.” He waited, not quite sure of his welcome. She had sounded cheerful enough, but the speaker distorted emotion.

“Hang on a minute, I’m due break. I’ll be right down.”

Tatian allowed himself a small sigh of relief and waited while one of the exoskeletons withdrew itself along a support beam. It clicked into a port at the top of a main pillar, and a small figure emerged from its center. She climbed down the long ladder and came to join him, stopping only to enter a code in the shop computer.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, and jerked her head toward the side door. “Let’s go out.”

Tatian followed her through the smaller door into the alley that ran between Repair One and the technician’s shed next door. It was shaded but still hot, the air heavy with the oncoming rain. The dirt-drifted paving was spotted with stains of spilled coffee and aram cuds, and the air smelled of ozone and fuel cells and the heady spice of the drift-grass.

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said. “How’re things?”

Tatian shrugged, but couldn’t repress a smile. He had half-forgotten, in the unpleasantness of their last quarrel, just how attractive she was. The close-fitting worksuit outlined the ample curves of hips and breasts; the tool belt just accentuated her tiny waist. She saw him looking and smiled back, appreciative and rueful all at once.