Jo Clayton: Shadowkill

“Rose…”

“Ah!” She scrambled onto her feet, struck out.

Kikun caught her arm, stopped her. “Rose!”

She looked up at him and remembered. “Shayss damn, Kuna, don’t DO that to me.”

“Sorry, Rose, I forgot.”

She sputtered, the laugh startled out of her; it echoed back along the narrow curving corridor and made her angry at herself. Slips like that could get them all killed.

“It’s all right, Rose. There’s no one around to hear.” He pulled her onto her feet, got his shoulder under her arm. “No guards, no nothing. Let’s go, Op. Shuffle-shuffle.”

The lock’s inner door gaped open, the cracks around it clogged with ancient crud. Kikun lifted Autumn Rose over the rim, helped her negotiate the crumpled flooring as they moved toward a heavy metal plug with three tube caps lined in a row across it. He hauled her to the one on the left end, cycled it open, and tossed her in.

As she passed from the argrav field into the.00 something gravity of the tube, she lost traction, caught hold of a tugline, and began hauling herself along the tube. Behind her she heard the soft whine as the cap irised shut, then the line jerked repeatedly as Kikun started after her.

She eased into the pilot’s seat with a sigh of relief, picked her leg up and set it in place and with automatic skill locked the crashweb about her. Having forgotten him again, she twitched as Kikun slid into the co-seat. “One of these days you’ll give someone a heart attack, Kuna.”

“Oh, no.”

“You seeing any snags ahead?”

“Nothing focused. Be careful, but move as fast as you can.”

“Right.”

A red light flashed in front of her the instant she cut loose from the tube. “Alarm,” she said. “Somebody noticed.” She was working as she spoke, swinging the shuttle about, sending it toward the gaping outer door of the lock. “Or maybe it’s automatic,” she said. “With a little luck…”

The port was near the top of the worldship where the shuttles could jump in and out without getting tangled in the web of tubes linking the central mass with the ring of much smaller derelicts.

Autumn Rose booted the shuttle into a reckless arc over that ring, came down to the central plane and darted for the skeletal marina that Ginny had provided for his bidders.

She circled the marina, put it between her and Koulsnakko’s Hole, then pooted along behind the ships, looking them over for size and conformation, talking absently as she kept her eyes fixed on the scanner. “We want a small ship, one that doesn’t take a big crew, two reasons, we couldn’t handle a big ’un and a small crew’s probably in the Hole, not lying about to make misery for us. And we should get one that can put down onplanet so we don’t have to depend on landers, who knows where we’ll end up. So, a small hot ship. None of these. No… no… ah! there’s one that might do if we can’t find… ah! Red light’s gone out, don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Ah… ah… yes! Don’t think we can do better than that one.” She centered the small sleek yacht in the screen, enlarged the image. “What do you think, Kuna?”

He shivered. “Do it. Something’s stepping on my shadow, Rose, breathing down my neck. Hurry.”

“Right.” Autumn Rose took the shuttle closer, nosed it around until it hung beside the yacht, lock nuzzling against lock. “Well, now it gets hard. Be helpful if I had one of Digby’s trick boxes, but I don’t, so we go with what we have. Let me see…”

She began playing with the sensor pad, stopping occasionally to watch the screen. Nothing happened. She muttered to herself and went back to work.

Kikun closed his eyes, his face went slack, idiotic. After a minute his fingers began tapping a complex rhythm. And a moment after that he produced a singing drone-melody to go with the rhythm.

Rose swung around, stared at him, then swore and touched on the recorder.

His hand went still. For a moment it lay on the arm of the co-seat like a discarded bit of weed. Then he began again, went through the whole sequence a second time. He stopped the tapping and the droning, worked his fingers, opened his eyes. “That’s it.”

“What? Never mind. I know what it is. Aburr Uchitel’s Aubade. I doubt there’s a soul in settled space who hasn’t had it played at him in some lift or another. Why?”

“It came to me.”

“Oh. Shayss damn, we need the Singer… mm… maybe not. You know anything about music?”

“Dinhast. Nothing beyond.”

“Oh. Well, let’s see…” She fed the recording into the shuttle’s tiny brain, cast it at the ship.

Nothing happened.

“Shayss!” Clicking tongue against palate, she listened to the recording again. “If it’s not the tune, maybe he’s playing games with intervals…” She went to work on the recording, running it through such permutations as the simple-minded shuttle brain would allow, matching the results against what she knew about key-psych and the parameters of amateur efforts along that line. She had a feeling it was amateur, any passkey twitched from such a collection of stale-isms as Uchitel’s Aubade had to belong to a mind-set far removed from the life views of the math techs she knew, the ones who made a profession of locking things away.

She came up with a run that was so familiar it was almost comic. She tried it. No. He’s a hair smarter than that. Or she. Whichever. Shayss damn, I wish I had… She glanced at Kikun who lay inert, eyes staring at things she’d never see-and didn’t particularly want to.

No help there. She pulled the possibles onto the screen, frowned at them, glanced at her ringchron. Time was passing. Right. The complicated one. Fussy. Canon of a kind. Stupid kind. Goerta b’rite, let this work. She cast the new recording at the ship and wiped the sweat off her face as the lock hummed open and an otto-docker caught hold of the tiny shuttle, eased it toward the gap.

“Wake up, Kuna my Liz, we’re in.”

Kikun drifted about the bridge, touching things, sniffing at them, occasionally standing with his eyes closed, swaying a little, humming softly under his breath.

Rose glanced up from the control pad she was studying, frowned at the screen. “Hey, look at this.”

Something strange was emerging from the top of the worldship. A blob of glowing white fog wobbled out of the lock, separated from it, and floated pulsing and flickering above it. A black speck arced over the blob, cast a line at it, and began towing it toward the marina.

As it drew closer, she saw dark objects floating in the plasm. Bodies. Hundreds of them. “Weird.”

Kikun ambled over, stood behind her, his hands on the back of her chair. “Yes,” he said. “I see. What is it?”

“I don’t know. Never saw anything like that. Never heard of it either.”

He leaned closer to her, she could feel his breath against her neck. “Shadow’s in there. Alive.”

“Oh.

“We have to follow that.”

“Can you? On your own?”

“I don’t know. For a while, maybe.” He moved away. She swung the chair around, scowled at him.

He’d gone across the room and was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, his back against the wood-paneled wall. His eyes were closed, but he felt her watching and cracked them to look at her. “Be ready,” he said.

She snorted, turned back to the control bank.

Sweet ship, as nearly idiot-proof as anything she’d come across. The previous owner must have liked to pilot himself now and then, maybe when he was going places he didn’t want people to know about. Like here.