Authors: Joan D. Vinge
Probably he was another smuggler, looking for work, and this
bottle was a flamboyant way of advertising his services. Just what they needed;
competition. But Kedalion intended to enjoy Reede’s generosity anyway. Even
though Kedalion didn’t advertise, his reputation for reliability was usually
enough to get him all the work he could handle. “You a runner?” he asked Reede.
Reede looked surprised. “Me? No.” He didn’t say what he did
do. Kedalion didn’t ask. “Why?” Reede asked, a little sharply, and then, “You
need one?”
“I am one.” Kedalion shook his head.
Reede nodded, easing off. “I knew your name was familiar.
Your ship is the Prajna. That’s a Samathan word for ‘God’—?” He raised his
eyebrows.
“One of them,” Kedalion said. “It means ‘astral light,’
actually. It’s supposed to bring luck.” He shrugged, mildly annoyed at having
to explain himself.
“It seems to work for you.” Reede’s mouth twitched. “You
have a good reputation. And you had your share of good fortune tonight.” He
spoke Trade, the universal second language of most people who did interstellar
business. Everyone here in the port spoke it; even the boy Ananke handled it
well enough. It was easy to learn a language with an enhancer; Kedalion spoke
several. It wasn’t easy to make a construct like Trade sound graceful. And from
what he had seen tonight, Reede was the last person he would have expected to
manage the feat. He glanced at Reede again, wondering where in hell somebody
like this came from anyway. Reede looked back at him, with an expression that
was close to thoughtful “So ‘honor among thieves’ is the code you live by?”
Kedalion smiled, hoping the question was rhetorical. “I only
wondered how you came by this.” He raised his cup of the water of life in a
toast; its scent filled the air he breathed. The silver liquid lay in the cup
like molten metal, waiting.
Reede shrugged. “I got it at the bar.”
“FromRavien?” Kedalion asked, incredulous. “That bastard.”
He pointed at his own bottle. “He claimed this was the best he had; he’s been
serving me swill for years.”
Reede grinned ferally. “He does that to everyone. You just
have to know how to ask ....”He fingered the expensive-looking jeweled ear cuff
that dangled against his neck; jerked it off suddenly, as if it was burning
hot, and flung it down on the table in disgust.
Kedalion looked away nervously. “Uh-huh,” he murmured. He
wondered how old Reede actually was; sitting here he had begun to realize that
the other man was much younger than he had thought. Reede had a strikingly
handsome face, and surprisingly nobody had smashed it in yet. But it was the
face of someone barely out of his teens—hardly older than Ananke. and a good
ten years younger than he was himself. The thought was depressing. But maybe
Reede was just baby-faced; his punk-kid looks were peculiarly at odds with his
manner and his apparent status. Kedalion decided that whatever Reede’s real age
was, someone who lived like that was not likely to get much older.
Reede sat moodily biting his thumbnail. He noticed Shaifaz
staring at his cast-off earring, and flicked it across the table at her. She
picked it up with long, slim fingers that hesitated slightly, and put it on.
She glanced at him, her expression grave. He smiled and nodded, and slowly she
smiled too. Ananke watched them silently; he barely seemed to be breathing.
Kedalion let out his own breath in a sigh, and lifted his
cup again. “Good business,” he said, offering the toast, savoring his
anticipation. The two Ondineans raised their cups.
“Good fortune.” Shaifaz gave the answer, still fingering her
new earring as she lifted her cup.
As the cup touched Kedalion’s lips, a loud sudden noise made
him jerk around. The rest of the room seemed to turn with him. a hundred heads
swiveling at once, looking toward the club’s entrance. And then chairs were
squealing on the patterned floor and the crowd found its voice, the room became
a sea of shouting, cursing motion.
“Son of a bitch,” Reede muttered irritably. “A raid.” He
leaned back in his chair, folding his arms in resignation, like a man waiting
out an inconvenient rainstorm.
Kedalion exchanged glances with the two Ondineans, not feeling
as sanguine about the outcome. He had never been present when the Church Police
raided a club, and never wanted to be. He had heard enough stories about their
brutality toward offworlders—that it was even worse than their brutality toward
their own people. The Hegemonic authorities were supposed to have jurisdiction
over noncitizens, but the Church inquisitors seldom bothered to notify or
cooperate with them.
A half dozen armed, uniformed men stood in the entrance, blocking
it off, searching the crowd as if they were looking for someone in particular.
Kedalion felt the habitual cold fist of paranoia squeeze his gut; realizing
that in a crowd like this it was monstrous egotism to think they were looking
for him, but not able to stop the sudden surge of fear.
And then a local man stepped from between the uniformed police—one
of the youths Ravien had thrown out of the club. He pointed. He pointed
directly at Kedalion.
Kedalion swore, sliding down from his chair as Shalfaz and
Ananke rose from theirs. Reede looked toward the entrance as he noticed their
panic. “You better get out of here—” He was already on his feet as he spoke,
beside Shalfaz, taking her arm. “You know another way out?”
She nodded, already moving toward the back of the club, with
Ananke on her heels. Kedalion started after them; hesitated, turned back to
grab the silver bottle off the table. He plunged back into the sea of milling
bodies like a man diving into the ocean; he was immediately in over his head, battered
by the surge of panic-stricken strangers. Cursing, he fought his way through
them in the direction he thought Shalfaz had taken, but the others were lost
from sight.
Hands seized him around the waist and dragged him back and
up. He struggled to break the hold, aimed a hard blow at his captor’s groin—
“Goddamn it!”
He realized, half a moment too late, that the man was not
wearing a uniform.
Reede swore, doubling up over him. “You asshole!” He
straightened with an effort, holding Kedalion under one arm like a stubborn
child.
Cursing under his breath, Kedalion let himself be carried ignominiously
but rapidly through the crush of bodies, through a maze of dark tunnels, and
finally out into the reeking back-alley gloom. The others stood waiting, fading
against the darkness. Reede dropped him on his feet.
“Go, quickly,” Shalfaz said, waving them on. “I must get
back.”
“But—” Kedalion gasped, with what breath he still had in
him. “Will you be safe?”
She shrugged, her body going soft with resignation. “I am only
a woman. I am not held responsible. If I let them—”
“No!” Ananke said. “Don’t! Come with us.” He pulled at her
arm almost desperately.
“The earring,” Reede said. “The stones are genuine. Buy them
off. You know the customs.” She nodded, and he shoved Ananke out into the
street. “Get moving.” He jerked Kedalion off his feet again.
“Damn it, put me down!” Kedalion swore as Reede began to
run. “i can—”
“No, you can’t.”
“Goddammit, I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. In big trouble. Complain about your injured
dignity later,” Reede hissed, looking back over his shoulder as he heard
shouting. Light burst on them from up ahead, lancing through the mudbrick
alleyway between building walls; they collided with Ananke as the boy skidded
to a stop. “We’re trapped!” Ananke cried, his voice going high like a girl’s.
Reede glanced up, at something beyond sight, and grunted, “They’re
high tracking us.” He turned and forced them into the narrow tunnel between two
buildings, out into a small open plaza; all Kedalion could see was mudbrick and
shadows, all he could hear was the sound of angry voices shouting at them to
stop. He shut his eyes. Any minute Reede would go down to someone’s weapon, and
this grotesque ignominy would reach its inevitable conclusion—
They slammed through the high double doors in a mountain of
building facade, into the vast cavern of its interior, the befuddling darkness
barely defined by the glow of countless candles. Up ahead of them a wall of hologramic
illumination burst across Kedalion’s vision—a thousand views of paradise
painted in light, rising to an ecstatic apex, a finger pointing toward heaven
like the pyramidal structure of which it formed one wall.
“We’re in a temple!” he gasped. “Can we ask for sanctuary?”
“From the Church Police? Who do you think they work for?”
Reede muttered He dropped Kedalion onto his feet again and hesitated, searching
the candlelit darkness. There were still a few worshipers prostrating
themselves before the high altar and the radiant images of light. He turned
back as the heavy doors burst open behind them. “Lose yourselves,” he said. “I’ll
draw them off .... Hey! Police!” he shouted, a warning or an invitation,
Kedalion wasn’t sure.
“Reede—” Kedalion began, but Reede was already bounding
away, silhouetting himself against the blinding light. “Gods! Come on.” He
nudged Ananke forward through the forest of candelabra, hoping that they could
fade into the random motion of bodies as people picked themselves up from their
prayers and scurried toward the exits. He pulled on the boy’s arm, forcing him
into the crowd. Ananke followed like someone in a trance; Kedalion felt the boy’s
body tremble.
Kedalion glanced back as people in the scattering crowd
cried out, to see Reede scramble up onto the gold-crusted altar, climbing
higher among its rococo pinnacles in an act of unthinkable desecration. Ananke
gasped in horror, and Kedalion swore in empathy and disgust as the
black-uniformed figures of the police closed in on Reede.
And then Reede leaped—throwing himself off of the altar into
the embrace of the light, into the wall of heaven.
Kedalion heard a splintering crash and stopped dead, gaping
in disbelief. The image hadn’t been a hologram at all—it had been a wall of
backlit glass. Now it bore a gaping black hole where Reede had gone through it
into the night outside. Kedalion groaned, beyond words to express what filled
him then.
He stared on again, but too late. Armored hands fell on his
shoulders, wrenching him around and into the embrace of a body manacle; a
volley of blows and kicks drove him to his knees, retching.
The police dragged him outside, with curses so graphic that
he couldn’t even translate most of them ... or maybe they were promises. Ananke
staggered beside him, bloody and dazed. Something was digging into his ribs
beneath his jacket—the silver and gold flask of the water of life. Sweet Edhu,
he thought, I’m going to die. They’ll kill us for this. And I never even got to
taste it. A gasp of hysterical laughter escaped him, and someone slapped him
hard.
Behind the temple, in a glittering snowfall of broken glass,
the rest of the police were gathered around Reede’s sprawled body. Kedalion
thought with a sick lurch that they’d killed Reede already. But as he was
dragged closer he saw them haul Reede up, his face bloody but his eyes wide
open, and knock him sprawling again into the field of glass.
Wanting to look away, Kedalion kept watching as a man who
looked like an officer pulled Reede to his feet, shaking him. “You think that’s
pain you feel, you whey-faced filth’? You don’t know what pain is. yet—”
Reede stared at him with wild eyes, and laughed, as if the
threat was completely absurd. Kedalion grimaced.
“Take him to the inquisitor/,” the officer snarled,
gesturing toward the police ground-van waiting across the square. Reede did not
protest or resist as they hauled him roughly toward it. “Take them all!”
Reede looked back as the officer’s words registered on him.
He stiffened suddenly, resisting the efforts to force him inside. Something
like chagrin filled his face as he watched the police drag the others toward
the van, and saw their own faces as they were dumped beside him. “Wait—” Reede
called out, and ducked the blow someone aimed at his head. “Elasark!”
The second officer, who had overseen Kedalion’s capture,
turned toward them abruptly, away from staring at the gaping hole in the glass
wall of the temple. “You—’?” he said, registering Reede’s presence with
something that looked like disbelief. He swore, and broke off whatever he had
been going to say next. He came toward the van, stood before Reede for a moment
that seemed endless to Kedalion, before he turned away again, his eyes hot with
fury. “Let him go.”
The other officer, the one who had knocked Reede down, let
out a stream of outraged protest that Kedalion could barely follow. The first
officer answered him, in Ondinean as rapid and angry, in which the names “Reede”
and “Humbaba” stood out like alien stones. He finished the outburst by drawing
his finger across his own throat in a blunt, graphic motion. “Let him go,” he
repeated.
The other officer didn’t move. The rest of the police stood
sullenly glaring at him, at the prisoners, as Elasark turned back and released
the manacle that held Reede. No one moved to stop him.
Reede climbed down out of the van, shaking himself out. He
turned and glanced up at Kedalion and Ananke, looked back at Elasark. “Those
two work for me,” he said.
Elasark stiffened, and the sudden hope inside Kedalion began
to curdle. “The window will be repaired perfectly inside of three days,” Reede
said. “You will receive a large, anonymous donation to the Church Security
Fund.” Slowly Elasark moved back to them and released their bonds, his motions
rough with barely controlled rage as he shoved them down out of the van. He
shouted an order and the police climbed inside, without their prisoners. The
doors slammed and the black van left the square, howling like a frustrated
beast.