Jo Clayton: Crystal Heat

“Double shot of Nibern for me, mineral water for that dancing fool across from me.” She waved away Lylunda’s motion to pay and dropped a credit chip in the jaje’s palm…

“How you can drink that syrup?” Lylunda shuddered.

“How you can smoke that crap?” Qatifa chuckled, a rumble, deep in her chest. “I like sweets. You should know, gula-mi. One splendid thing about skin people, you can smear them with all sorts of lovely goo and lick it off without getting fur in your teeth.” An ear twitched. “The sale came through just before you called, Luna. I’m out of here before the next pay cycle at the tie-down. Which means a couple hours and see-ya.”

Lylunda grimaced. Before she could respond, the waiter was back with their order. She took the flask of bubbling water and gloomed at it. “It’s been fun,” she said finally. “Maybe we could do it again sometime.”

“That’s what you said the last time. You should work on your valedictions a bit, gula-mi.” Qatifa’s grin faded. She gulped down a mouthful of the Nibern, sat chewing on the fruit. “Luna, my friend, I’ve heard a rumor or two. Why don’t you tandem your ship on-mine and come fool around a while with me on Acaanal?”

Lylunda smiled. However much she liked Qatifa, she’d be jumping out of her skin by her second week of undiluted Caan company. “Thanks, Qat. I’ve got commitments elsewhere, but I appreciate the thought.”

Qatifa looked at the glass, wrinkled her blunt nose. “I’d better go pee ’f I don’t want to disgrace myself next time we hit the floor. Besides, the hornman promised me a slow dance and it’s about time he came through on that.”

Alternating sips of the water with draws on the pipe, Lylunda watched the tall femme undulate through the closely packed tables, using the tips of her claws on hopeful hands trying to cop a feel of Caan fur. For a moment she was tempted to change her mind and go with Qatifa, but common sense returned when the sleekly graceful form vanished behind a bead curtain.

She felt something brush against her neck and turned to see the back of a man moving away from her, a stranger as far as she could tell. When nothing else happened, she forgot about him and let the pelar float her off to a place where she wasn’t worried about anything.

The man calling himself Exi Exinta came out of the drifts of smoke and stood beside her. “Come with me,” he said.

Larr off, Ziz, she thought, then was startled as her body rose and walked after him. What the… Zombi! That snake shot me up with Zombi juice. She drew in a breath to yell, but Exinta heard and turned. “Be quiet,” he said.

Her throat closed and the words died there as she shuffled after him, the pelar countering the Z-juice enough to let her drag her feet. She contrived to bump heavily into tables, to slam into people, to swing her arms so she knocked over drinks, creating a commotion that set Exinta cursing under his breath as he grabbed her arm and tried to hustle her along faster.

Lylunda fixed her eyes on the door, sweat coiling down her face, fear and rage knotting her insides. It drew closer and closer. She tried to pull loose, but the hold of the drug was too strong even with all the pelar in her system. Her tongue was locked, she couldn’t even form words, let alone say them.

“Oy! Luna. Where you going? Huh?” Qatifa’s voice, filled with anger and alarm.

Exinta yanked on her arm. They were almost to the door. She managed to turn her head, to open her mouth. She couldn’t speak… not a word… not a word…

Golden eyes widened as Qatifa understood what was happening. “Zombi,” she roared, her voice cutting through the noise of instruments tuning and the undertone of conversation, shocking the place to silence. She came plunging through the tahles, claws out, mouth stretched in a threat snarl, teeth glistening in the light from the pseudo torches.

Exinta ran for his life, diving under the arm of a peacer ’bot that came clanking into the cafй.

Most of the crowd in the Tangul faded as the ’bot hummed over to Lylunda and clamped his cuff claw around her wrist. Qatifa patted her cheek. “Gula-mi, don’t take this wrong, but I can’t afford to get hung up.” Then she faded with the rest.

Lylunda Elang sat on a couch in the armored peaceplex, cursing Exinta and trying not to think about the headache that was sitting behind her eyes ready to sink its claws. She rubbed absently at the itchy place on her wrist where they took blood to make sure what she’d been given. Jaink! I’ll be glad when I’m finally flushed clean of that stuff. I want a full spectrum clear, who knows what that ziz blew into me. Not from this lot either, I wouldn’t trust them with a cotton swab. What’s holding things up? I want to get out of here.

The door slid open and a nutrient dish with an immature Blurdslang hummed in. “Des’ Ela’?”

Lylunda got carefully to her feet, trying not to jar the lurking headache awake. “I can go?”

“I’ you ’ollow me?”

She sighed and moved after him.

The elder Blurdslang contemplated her for several moments, then played his fingerlings over the speaker cube. “The Directors are considerably disturbed by the use of a will suppressant; I am sure you can understand the reasoning behind that, smuggler, so I will not elaborate. The user has been located and probed. There was a confederate, a brother, but he left before we could lay hands on him. By the end of the dium, the user will be wiped and sold to a contract labor firm. The Kliu will be informed that they are not welcome here. We have discussed what to do about you, Lylunda Elang. There was a suggestion that since you drew those men here, you should share their fate. The Broker Jingko iKan spoke for you and convinced the majority that you are a valued client and will continue to be one.”

Too angry and alarmed to speak, Lylunda pressed her lips together and tried to ignore the throbbing in her left temple.

“The will suppressant was a bootleg version of c5 Z juice as it is called in the vernacular, overage, with a number of impurities that could cause you some difficulty. The medtechs suggest you prepare yourself for several days bed rest and a bland diet, eschewing all caffeine and other drugs. The Directors suggest you do it on board your ship, bound elsewhere.”

“All right. Can I go now?”

“In a moment. The Directors of Marrat’s Market are not banning you; they simply suggest that you clear up this difficulty before you attempt to return. Have you any questions?”

“No.”

“Your gear has been collected from your room in the ottotel and will be waiting in a transfer pod. A peacer ’bot will escort you to the pod. I am told to inform you this is a courtesy not a constraint.”

Migraine auras invading her eyes like flags of crumpled cellophane shivering in a high wind, Lylunda brought her ship to what counted as a stop at the Limit, drifting into a slow orbit about Marrat’s sun while the ottodoc grumbled at her blood and she ran a disinfect over the outer surface of the ship. The crawler dislodged three tags, one obvious and meant to be found, one subtle and one she didn’t understand at all that she found only by chance, a shift in the solar wind that jogged the crawler in just the right way.

By the time the doe’s notifier pinged, she was blind in large areas of her vision field and her head hurt so much that she couldn’t bear to move. She turned and almost drowned in the vomit that caught her by surprise as she groped for the slot; she slid her arm in and waited for the shot she hoped would give her some relief.

She felt the sting against her wrist, a moment later the burn of stomach acid in her throat, a shiver in her knees. She just had time to withdraw her arm before she collapsed in a heap on the floor.