Part 15 (2/2)

He was gone a long time. Long enough that I began to wonder if perhaps he'd decided that this had become more trouble than it was worth, that both Shawn and I were expendable, and he was off making the appropriate arrangements. I was just thinking about pulling out my phone and seeing if Ixil had come out of his coma when the screen abruptly cleared.

”All right,” he said briskly. ”He's a Drilie named Emendo Torsk, and he runs his business from a street music stand at Gystr'n Corner. I presume your sick crewman can pay?”

”We should have enough, yes,” I a.s.sured him. ”Thank you, sir.”

”Don't call here again, Jordan,” he said quietly. ”Not until this is all over.

Is that clear?”

”Yes, sir, perfectly clear,” I said. If the Icarus was going to go down, and if I was going to be stupid enough to go down with it, he had no intention of being tied in with either of us. ”Thank you, sir.”

”I'll talk to you when this is all over.” He reached to the side, and the connection was broken.

I swallowed, noticing only then how dry my mouth had become. Dealing with Brother John was becoming increasingly hard on me, both because of him personally and because of what he represented. To say I'd ever been genuinely happy about our arrangement would have been far too generous a statement; but lately my quiet distaste seemed to have fermented into a galloping revulsion.

And that was dangerous. Not only because of what it was doing to my own heart and soul, not to mention my stomach, but because men like Brother John have a finely honed sense of people, particularly the people closest to them. I was hardly close to him, just one small employee among thousands, but the Antoniewicz organization hadn't gotten where it was by letting even small employees become disaffected to the point where they dribbled away money or merchandise or secrets. Especially secrets.

Brother John was presumably under no illusions about what it was that kept me working for him; I'd already seen how adept he was at making sure thathalf-million-commark debt would be hanging over my head for a long time to come.

But if he was ever able to penetrate my mask and see the emotion swirling beneath it, he might very well decide I was a walking time bomb that needed to be dealt with.

But there was nothing for it now but to continue on. I'd made my bed, as the saying went, and now all I could do was make myself as comfortable in it as I could.

Unfortunately, for the moment comfort of any sort was out of the question. I'd suffered through yet another conversation with Brother John; and now I had to do what I'd been postponing for at least three worlds now.

It was time for a nice long chat with Uncle Arthur.

The call screener on Uncle Arthur's vid was female, cheerful, and if not actually beautiful, definitely edging in that direction. Following on the heels of Brother John's surly male screener with the plastic-surgeon-baiting face, it was a contrast that seemed all the vaster for the comparison.

Until, that is, you looked closely into her eyes. For all her attractiveness, for all her easy smile and aura of friendliness, there was something cool and measuring and even ruthless that could be seen in those eyes. Given the proper circ.u.mstances, I had long suspected, she would be able to kill as quickly and efficiently as any of the ice-hearted thugs in Brother John's household.

But then, that was to be expected. She did, after all, work for Uncle Arthur.

”It's Jordan, Shannon,” I greeted her, pus.h.i.+ng such thoughts out of my mind as best I could. I had to prepare to talk to Uncle Arthur; and anyway, despite the eyes, she was really quite good-looking. ”Is he available?”

”h.e.l.lo, Jordan,” she said, her smile tightening just a bit. Unlike Brother John's screener, she took my altered face in stride without blinking an eye.

”I'll see.”

A superfluous comment, of course; she would have signaled Uncle Arthur as soon as she recognized me. And if the tightening smile was any indication, I suspected Uncle Arthur was either sufficiently interested or sufficiently annoyed with me to take the call immediately.

I was right. Even as she turned toward her control board her face abruptly vanished from the screen and was replaced by one considerably less photogenic.

An age-lined face, framed by a thatch of elegant gray hair and an equally elegant gray goatee with an unexpected streak of black down the middle, and topped off with a pair of pale blue eyes peering unwinkingly at me across the top of a set of reading gla.s.ses.

It was Uncle Arthur.

Judging from past experience, I fully expected him to get in the first word. I wasn't disappointed. ”I presume, Jordan,” he said in a rumbling voice that somehow went perfectly with the beard and gla.s.ses, ”that you have some good explanation for all this.”

”I have an explanation, sir,” I said. ”I don't know whether you'll think it good or not.”

For a moment he glared at me, and I could see his face tilting fractionally back and forth. The gla.s.ses, I'd long since decided, were about two-thirds necessity for an inoperable eye condition and one-third affectation, with the added benefit of giving him something he could use to subtly throw distracting flickers of light into people's eyes while he was talking to them. That waswhat he was doing now, though through a vid screen it was a complete waste of his time. Probably pure subconscious habit.

He finished his glaring and leaned back a bit in his chair. ”I'm listening,”

he invited.

”I ran into Arno Cameron in a taverno on Meima,” I told him. He would be wanting details-Uncle Arthur always wanted details-but there was no time for me to go into them now. ”He was in a jam, with a s.h.i.+p to fly to Earth and no crew. He asked if I would pilot it, and I agreed.”

”You just happened to run into him, did you?” Uncle Arthur rumbled ominously.

”Did I somehow forget to mention that you weren't supposed to do anything but watch him?”

”He was the one who accosted me, not the other way around,” I said. ”I didn't think challenging him to a duel for such an impertinence would be a proper response.”

He turned the shrivel power of his glare up a couple of notches, but I'd just faced down Brother John, and Uncle Arthur's glares didn't seem nearly as potent in comparison. ”We'll leave that aside for the moment,” he said. ”Have you any idea of the furor you and that s.h.i.+p are causing at the moment?”

Almost the same question, and in very nearly the same tone, that Brother John had asked. ”Not really,” I said. ”All I know for sure is that there are agents of the Patth spreading hundred-commark bills through the Spiral's sewers, with an extra five thousand for the one who fingers me for them.”

”Five thousand commarks, did you say?” Uncle Arthur asked, c.o.c.king an eyebrow.

”That's what I was told a few hours ago on Dorscind's World,” I said carefully.

Uncle Arthur had a latent dramatic streak in him, which generally surfaced at the worst times. The fact that he had now slipped into that mode was a bad sign.

”Have they upped the ante since then?”

”Considerably.” He picked up a sheet of paper, holding it up to the camera as if to prove he wasn't just making it all up. ”The Patth Director General has personally been in contact with at least fifteen different governments along your projected route in the past twelve hours,” he read from it in the precise, clipped tone he always used when delivering bad news. ”They have been informed that a s.h.i.+p called the Icarus, with a human male named Jordan McKell in command, is to be detained immediately upon identification. It is then to be held until a representative of the Director General arrives, at which point it is to be turned over to him.”

I felt a s.h.i.+ver run up my back. ”Or else?”

”Or else,” he added, in that same clipped tone, ”the Patth will impose mercantile sanctions on the offending governments, the severity of the sanctions to be determined by the offending government's perceived complicity in the Icarus's escape. Up to and including a complete embargo against that species'

cargoes.”

He laid the paper back down again. ”As you say, the ante has been upped,” he said quietly. ”What in G.o.d's name did Cameron's people dig up out there, Jordan?”

”I don't know, sir,” I said, just as quietly. ”But whatever it is, it'ssitting in the Icarus's cargo hold.”

Dramatically, it was the moment for a long, heavy silence. But Uncle Arthur's dramatic impulses didn't extend to wasting time. ”Then you'd best find a way to learn what it is, hadn't you?” he said.

”Actually, I think I already have,” I said. ”Found a way, that is. Can you get hold of a personnel list from that archaeological dig?”

”I have it right here,” he said. ”Why?”

”Because I suspect one of them is aboard the Icarus,” I told him.

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