George Martin - Starlady & Fast-Friend

Janey was still looking when she heard the voice from behind her. “The man is one of the leading citizens of Thisrock,” the voice said, in a mellow, purring tone. “We call his kind insiders. The woman is an officer from a Promethean starship, of course; I expect that you knew that, dear. And your lesson, I’d guess, was to be that both insiders and Prometheans are to be treated with deference. They are powerful people.”

They turned. The speaker was wearing a Promethean uniform, too; but unlike the woman’s his was thin and patched. He had nothing else in common with the starship officer, or with anyone else in the crowd. Instead of being hairless, his face and hands were both completely covered by a soft gray fur. His ears were pointed, his nose was black, his eyes feline. He was, in fact, a man-cat.

“Hello, Hal,” he said, in the oddly gentle voice that mocked the stingstick swinging from his belt. Then he smiled at Janey. “Right now you’re full of questions,” he said. “I know them all. First, I don’t talk like the others because I’m not from Thisrock, and I have an education. I don’t look like the others because I was genetically altered. A game they play with the lowborn on Prometheus, you know. My alterations were not satisfactory, though, so I wound up here. Some of them work, however. I heard Hal’s last comment from quite a distance. Now, yes, that should cover it.” He smiled. His teeth were very sharp.

Hal did not smile back. “Janey Small,” he said, pointing. “Stumblecat.”

Stumblecat nodded. Janey stood frozen.

“You’re clearly a star-born,” Stumblecat said in his cultured tones. “How ever did you wind up with Hal?”

“Starlady was passing through,” Hairy Hal said sharply. “She hired the wrong bodyguard. Listened to Crawney spin, an’ wound up raped and ripped. Now she’s with Hal.”

“You always were one to take advantage of a ripe situation, Hal,” Stumblecat said. He laughed. “Well, I’ll keep the starlady in mind the next time I’m looking. She might be an interesting change.”

Hairy Hal was not amused, but he kept from showing it. He shrugged. “Yours anytime, Stumblecat,” he said slowly.

“For a spin and a smile, Hal?”

Hal’s face was dark. “For a spin and a smile, Stumblecat,” he said slowly.

Stumblecat laughed, stroked Janey with a soft furred hand, then turned and left.

And Janey, hot eyes glaring, turned on Hairy Hal. “I agreed to work for you because you gave me no choice. I don’t like it, but I recognize the situation I’m in. There was nothing said about you giving me to your friends.”

Hal frowned hard. “An’ nothing done, either. Listen to the biggest rule, starlady. Insiders, Prometheans, you scope them good, an’ give them room, an’ let them be customers. Nobody gets you free, cept black skulls. Yes , starlady. Like the ones who raped you up, don’t look so white. For them, you do anything, be nice, charge nothing less they offer to pay. An’ also for the black skull bosses. Like the Marquis, who Hal will tell about. Like Crawney, who hit you. An’ Stumblecat.

“Hey now, starlady, you look shocked. Why? Mayliss spun you straight, you knew it. Probly you thought Stumblecat was a good guy, right? Cause he talks like you, only better. Well, starlady just did another stupid. First she hums to Crawney, now to Stumblecat. Next thing you’ll be cuddling the Marquis himself; you already got both his leetenants.”

His good hand was pinching her shoulder painfully as he spoke, and people in the crowd were throwing quick looks their way. Janey, furious, spun free.

“What about all that protection ?” she shouted. “If I don’t even get that much, why should I wear this ?” She tore off her headband, thrust it at him.

Hairy Hal stood there, looking down at it. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said, shrugging. “Up to you, starlady. Hal doesn’t force no one.” He smiled. “But he’s better than them.”

Janey stared at him, saying nothing, holding the red rag out in her hand. Hal looked at the ground and scratched his head. And, in the awkward silence, a third man approached.

He was short, heavy, off-world; his clothes were rich. And his eyes moved constantly in a nervous scramble to see if anyone he knew was around. “Excuse me,” he said. Quickly, quickly. “I—that is—the man on my ship told me to look for a man with a green cape and, well, ah, hair.” He waited expectantly.

Hairy Hal looked at him, then at Janey. He said nothing.

Her hand fell. She stared at Hal’s face, then at the ground, then—finally—at the off-worlder.

“Come on,” she said at last.

Somewhere along the line, her name got lost. Janey Small of Rhiannon was gone, flown away on a ship hardly remembered. She was Starlady, and she did a thriving trade.

It wasn’t the off-worlders so much; after the first, they came to her no more than any other. It was the starslummers who gave her business, the kids with the hand-me-down stingsticks and the whooping swoopsuits who caught the scent of the stars. They’d grown up with shaved-skull hard-eyed redheads, and they wanted hair and dreams and maybe innocence. They hummed to Starlady. They came to Starlady.

And she learned, yes yes, she learned.

There was a night-cycle near the docks, when a corridor club got a hold of her. The queen of the club was a blue-skulled dreamer, and the man she hummed to had gone to Starlady. So she stared and smiled and drooled while her three underboys stripped their catch and started to play with their stingsticks. Ah, but then Hairy Hal was there! Starlady had friends all along the Concourse, and the friends had seen the grab, and they got to Hal, and he knew the dock section where the club called home. Such a short fight. An underboy swung his stingstick, Hal lifted his humming blue ghost blade, the baton sheared neatly in two, and the club ran.

And she learned, yes yes, she learned.

There was an afternoon at Hal’s in the third bedroom, the special one with the canceller that wiped out Thisrock’s gravity grid. But the customer wanted more than free-fall fun; he had a nervelash, which is like a stingstick, only worse. She screamed, and Hal was there, kicking off and floating fast and graceful, bringing his no-knife up and around. Afterwards they had to turn off the canceller, to ground all the droplets of blood.

And she learned, yes yes, she learned.

There was a conference at Hal’s one night, and she met Dark Edward with his hot red eyes and his double stingstick and his plans for being emperor again, plus Fat Mollie who ran a stable of boys. They wanted Hairy Hal to join them. “It’s a straight spin, Hal,” Dark Edward said in a ponderous voice. “We can hit him good, and I’ll make you my leetenant.” He talked and talked and talked, but Hal just shook his head and threw them out. Afterwards he and Mayliss fought for hours.

But there came a silver morning two weeks later, when Crawney and Stumblecat dragged Dark Edward screaming to the center of the Plaza. At first Janey just watched Stumblecat, in all his soft-furred clumsiness, and noted the lack of feline grace that Hal had told her of, the curious lack that made him a reject from Prometheus and gave him his curious name. Then she saw the Marquis, and she knew what was going to happen.

The Marquis had all of Stumblecat’s stolen grace. He wore black boots, and the robes of an insider, but he was very silent. His skull was silver; it shone in the Plaza light. Around it, covering his eyes, was a solid ring of tinted blueblack plastic.

While Janey watched, while hundreds watched, he took Dark Edward’s double stingstick and turned it on. Crawney and Stumblecat held the victim. The Marquis played for hours.