Jo Clayton: The Burning Ground

He chuckled. She felt it more as warm breath tickling her ear than as sound. “A gelder an hour, fifty the night, a la carte for the rest. First dance is free, just for the pleasure of it.”

Her words breathless and fast, she said, “Convince me, hired man. Dance, and we’ll see how you read me and go on from there.”

He was a small man, a trifle shorter than her with a sharp face, pointed ears, and laughter in his black eyes as he swept her into the swirl of dancers.

At first his dancing was competent, even exciting, but there was an impersonal quality to it that muted her enjoyment, her extra senses reading his detachment, cooling her down to match his chill. Then-change. His pale face flushed as he opened himself more deeply into the music and the moving, reading her body as if his nerves were joined to hers. By the time the set was done and the danc, ing stopped, she knew she wanted this to go on.

She leaned against him, watched while the band fiddled with some minor retuning. “Tell me what I want.”

“Music. Dancing. Talk. Danger. Sex.”

“Then let’s go find them.”

Head throbbing in sync with the caller chimes, Shadith groaned and groped until she found the shutoff and the wake-up call went silent. She lay a moment, her face buried in the pillow, flickers of memory running through her head. Did I really strip to the skin in that cheechirrie dump and dance with a pack of rats I ‘ticed from the conduits? Oh, Spla Ha!

She moved her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed up till she was sitting with her head in her hands. Her mouth felt like the tail of an old jack’s ragship. She straightened her back, sucked in a long breath. Mistake. The stink of sex and smoke and stale drink and who knew what else churned her stomach into instant rebellion.

She lunged up and reached the fresher just in time.

When she joined Autumn Rose in the lobby of the ottotel, she was neat and clean and ready for business. Rose smiled at the dark blotches under bloodshot eyes, but said nothing, just moved out with a brisk beat of her boot heels on the pavement. Shadith closed her eyes a moment, then grimly followed after her.

Marrat’s OverSec was an ancient Blurdslang; his three rheumy eyes were set so deep in warty folds of tissue that an occasional gleam was the only evidence he was awake and alert. His nutrient dish was larger than most and closed in, his tentacles rested on the cover in contemplative loops. Around him, shut into cubicles of soundproofed glass, much younger Blurdslangs worked over sensor boards or watched plates, the hair-fine fingerlets at the end of their handling tentacles busy at notation and half a dozen other tasks; the Blurdslang mind was more than capable of doing several things at once.

The Elder’s age and status made him unwilling to attempt the usual approximation of interlingue most Blurdslang spoke. Instead he held a voice cube in one of his manipulators, the fingerlets wriggling like a nest of worms over the surface sensors, producing words in a sweetly musical voice that seemed to amuse him; when the cube spoke, his horny lips flexed and shifted in the silent dance of Blurdslang laughter. “You will make your copies here, and we will review them before they leave our hands. It is only because of Digby’s reputation for magisterial silence that we have bowed to Sunflower’s pressure and allowed this. We ask that you destroy the flakes once you have no more use for them.” He paused and waved a tentacle tip at Autumn Rose.

“It will be done.”

“Good. The room is prepared, access to the hours in question has been arranged, there is a supply of blank flakes in a recorder. Any questions?”

“The reviewing of the flakes can be accomplished in the room assigned?”

“Ah. That was not envisaged, but certainly can be arranged while the two of you are viewing the originals.”

“Then we need to get started.”

“I think this is the one.” Shadith tapped a sensor and an image bloomed on the forescreen-a Caan smuggler and a slight androgenous figure whose species was as problematic as its sex.

They’d moved to the ship Digby’d provided and were working in a shielded cabin, having run the flakes from the day’s work through a WatchDog to strip away any little surprises OverSec might have coded into them. It was a tedious job, checking names and putative worlds of origin of the seven hundred ninety-one entities who had left Marrat’s Market within or shortly after the theft window, ten hours in all. A surprising number in so short a time, but this was a busy place.

“Why.?”

“One. Because the little one is a fair match in size and build to the cleaner.” She brought up the image of the cleaner from the flake Prehanet had provided. “As you see. Two. I don’t recognize the species. What with one thing and another I’ve come across quite a good percentage of the star-hopping kinds, Cousin and nonCousin, at least those in reasonable reach of the Market. To get into that building you need a specialized ghost; Kikun’s the only one I know who’d come close to that description. Certainly none of those others. Three. The registry of the Caan’s ship. Mavet-Shi. That’s one of Sabato’s Mask Companies. You know the Caan and what they think of arms dealers. Just how happy would he be,” she waggled a finger at the screen, “running on Sabato’s lead? The gadget would be hard to sell without specs and provenance, but high-grade ananiles would go anywhere for top prices. What odds our Caan’s looking to buy himself loose?”

“Hm. I’ve heard of Sabato. How did you discover his connection with Mavet-Shi? I doubt even Digby knows that.”

“Ran across him on Avosing. Selling armaments for the Ajin’s rebellion. I had a very odd and informative acquaintance who told me more than I wanted to know about a lot of things.”

“I see.”

Shadith wrinkled her nose. “Of course, the thief could be hunkered down somewhere in the Market, waiting for the noise to fade, and all this logic is angel counting.”

“I doubt it. A world he could get lost on. Marrat’s is too limited and too controlled.” Autumn Rose examined the two images. “Make one last check. Set search parameters for height, weight, and body profile. Scrap the rest. Seems to me I remember a few that might be almost as good a match.”

The ship’s kephalos found two. One was a rather ambiguous figure in the crew of a Clove’ Matriarch, the second a Cousin arriving in a small, battered merchanter, who claimed Spotchalls as world-of-origin and proclaimed himself a jewel trader.

“Hm. Given that Prehanet’s security is as effective as he thinks, given that your reasoning holds about the cleaner, given that size is the determining factor, your first choice is by far the most likely. Matriarchs are so deep into control that clone must have about as much free will as an industrial ‘bot. The other… we can drone his specs to Digby with the report. He just might be smarter than he looks. Hm.” Rose rubbed at the faint creases at the edge of her eye. “There’s something familiar about your pet. Something I’ve seen recently… in passing, I think, not interesting enough to command attention… doesn’t matter, if I’ve seen it, Digby will have it. Let’s get out of here before the local paranoia takes hold and makes life strange.”

Blood is silent in darkness, but screams for justice when it sees the sun.

Thann huddled in the corner where a section of house wall still stood while the sniper in the hills sprayed pellets along the street; xe could feel Isaho getting farther and farther away, picture her scurrying like a mayomayo pup along the ruined streets. At least she was still alive.