Timothy Zahn - Star Song and Other Stories

From across the room came the whisper of air that signaled the opening of the double doors. Chen spun around to face that direction, dropping her arm to her side to conceal the gun against the back of her right thigh. I felt my muscles tense, reflexively estimating the distance to her gun and the chances I could get there before she could aim and fire...

Obviously not as subtly as I'd thought. "Don't, Jake," Rhonda hissed into my ear, gripping my arm. "It's still set on three-needle."

"Hello, everyone," Bilko said, wandering almost casually into the room.

Wandering in alone; and even as I tried to catch a glimpse of anyone else who might be out in the foyer the doors swung shut again. "Sorry to be late, Jake—my game went a little longer than I'd expecte—"

He broke off as his eyes landed on the gun Chen had brought back into view again. "Relax, Hobson, it's not what it seems," she assured him. "My name is Andrula Chen; second cousin of the Chen-Mellis family, with the mission of bringing this colony back to the Expansion. Unfortunately, the power structure here is resisting me, and I'm going to need your assistance."

"Well... sure," he said, throwing a puzzled look at the rest of us on the couch.

"Jake?"

"Captain Smith wanted more than his assistance was worth," Chen said. "He demanded ten million neumarks; I could only offer five."

She looked at me as if daring me to contradict her. But though her eyes were on me, her gun was pointed at Rhonda. I held her gaze, and kept my mouth shut.

Bilko snorted derisively. "Five million neumarks not good enough, huh? Well, that's management for you. OK, Ms. Chen, you've got yourself a deal. What do you need me to do?"

"I need you to plot us a course from here back to Angorki," she said. "Can you do it?" "Sure—no sweat," he said, glancing around and starting toward the desk. "I just need a computer—there must be one back here somewhere."

And across at Peter's end of the couch, Suzenne suddenly inhaled sharply.

Chen heard her, too. "Just a minute," she snapped, throwing a suspicious glare at Suzenne. "What was that all about?"

Suzenne seemed to shrink back into the cushions. "What was what?"

"What's over there at the desk?" Chen demanded.

"Nothing," Suzenne said guardedly. "What could be there?"

"Yeah, what could be there?" Bilko agreed, taking another step toward the desk.

"Computer's probably in one of these drawers, right?"

"Get away from there," Chen said sharply, spinning back to face him. "I said get away."

"Sure, OK," Bilko said, taking a hasty step back and holding up both hands.

"What's the problem?"

"Maybe you're a little too cooperative." Chen threw me a hard look. "And maybe there was more to Smith's private joke than he let on. Move away—I'll find the computer."

"Whatever you say," Bilko shrugged, taking another step back. Chen circled around behind the desk, clearly trying to watch all of us at once. She pulled the desk chair out and half stooped to pull open one of the drawers—

The thick glass panels were so perfectly transparent and moved so fast that they were almost impossible to see. But there was no missing the sudden thundercrack as they slammed out of disguised cracks in the floor and thudded solidly against the ceiling, sealing the desk and the area around it into its own isolated space.

Chen's curse—I assume she cursed—was lost in the echo of that boom, as was the sound of her shot. She ducked reflexively back as the needles ricocheted from the barrier; and then the guard who'd come through the doorway that had magically appeared in the wall behind the desk was on her, the momentum of his diving tackle slamming her hard against the glass. By the time the second and third guards made it through the door, she had run out of fight.

"Don't hurt her," Peter called. We were all on our feet now, though I personally couldn't recall having stood up. "Take her to a holding cell."

"Make sure you search her first," Suzenne added. "Thoroughly."

They hustled her out through the hidden door, and Peter turned back to me.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "However you did it, we're in your debt."

"No problem," Bilko assured him, coming up to join us. "When Jake says to whistle up the cops, I whistle up the cops." He looked back toward the desk, watching as the glass panels receded back into the floor. "Now that it's over, can someone tell me what I just blew five million neumarks over?"

"The biggest attempted hijacking in history," I said, looking at Peter. "And unfortunately, it's not over yet."

"You really think her people will be coming to look for her?" Suzenne asked.

"It's worse than that," I said grimly. "The implication she's out here alone is nonsense—no Chen-Mellis second cousin would be stupid or reckless enough to come out here without backup already on its way. My guess is we've got maybe two or three days before they get here. Maybe less."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Bilko cut in. "If they're that close, why didn't she just wait for them in the first place? Why bother coming in with us?"

"Because there are other people looking for the Freedom's Peace," I told him.

"And the first one to get here is going to be the one with salvage rights claim.

Odds are that those loudspeakers she scattered around the colony really are also recorders, just like she said, so that she'll have a record of her presence here."

"But then why didn't she wait for her people to arrive before revealing herself to us?" Peter asked, clearly confused. "Why risk tipping us off the way she did?"

"Pure arrogance," Rhonda suggested. "She wanted to deliver you personally to the backup team."

"Or else she wanted to be the one who got the flapblacks to get you moving,"

Bilko put in. "Maybe there's even some rivalry between her and the backup team—the Ten Families are supposed to be riddled with upper-level infighting.

If she got the Freedom's Peace back to Angorki on her own, she'd look that much better."

"The reasons and motivations don't matter," I interrupted the budding debate.

"The bottom line is that we've got trouble on the way."

"I can't allow my people to be forced into servitude, Captain," Peter said softly, the lines in his face deepening. "If it comes to that choice, we will fight."

"Let's see if we can't find a third choice," I said. "Tell me about those flapblacks that surround the colony, the ones who chase away the others. What are they, predators of some kind?"

Peter smiled sadly. "Hardly. They're merely the eldest of the Star Spirits.

The ones marking their last few weeks as they wait for death."

An unpleasant shiver ran up my back. I knew all creatures died, of course, and in fact we'd had that argument on the way in over whether our wrapping flapblacks were getting eaten. But somehow the thought of a group of aging flapblacks hovering together waiting quietly to die was more disturbing than I

would have expected it to be. Perhaps it took some of the magic away, or perhaps it felt too much like the death of a favorite pet.

"Like all Star Spirits, they enjoy music," Peter continued quietly. "But of a particular kind, the kind only we apparently know how to write for them.

That's what the music in the colony is for."

Abruptly, Suzenne looked at me and smiled. "One of them remembers you, Captain.

He says he carried you once a long time ago."

A second chill ran through me. "They get into our minds?" I asked carefully.

"Not just the musicmaster's, I mean, but all the rest of us, too?"

"No, they can't read minds, Captain," Peter assured me. "Not even ours, and we're as attuned to them as any humans have ever been. No, they simply recognize you by the shape of your minds, just as you recognize them by the spectra of their passing." "I see," I murmured. Like a favorite pet, I'd just thought. Only which of us was the pet? "So why do they drive the other flapblacks away?"