Part 24 (2/2)
”I'm prepared to offer you free pa.s.sage to wherever that orange rock thinks you should go, providing you can tell me about Durant. I understand the name is familiar to you?”
”I haven't seen my brother in almost a year, so I don't know what he's up to,” Abelardus said, ”but yes, Lady Naidoo instructed me to help you get in touch with him.”
”She did? Huh.” Alisa was surprised the woman had remembered their deal and planned to keep her word.
”I will send a message from your s.h.i.+p and try to get in contact with him. He's fallen off the grid, at least as far as we know, so it may take time to answer. When last I heard from him, several months ago, he was visiting Cleon Moon.”
”What's on Cleon Moon?”
”That would interest our people? I can't presume to know what Durant was up to there, but... there is a Sta.r.s.eer school in the mushroom forests there. They often take orphans.”
”Jelena isn't an orphan,” Alisa snapped.
Abelardus spread a hand. ”Nevertheless, it would be the logical place to drop an unattached Sta.r.s.eer child. And it's also... off the grid.”
”What does that mean?”
”It's been a while since anyone has been able to communicate with them.”
”Cleon Moon,” Alisa said with a nod. It wasn't exactly a solid lead, but at least it was a direction to fly, a starting point. ”We better go inside, get out of the cold and off the ice.”
Neither man objected when she led the way up the ramp, though Abelardus did gaze into the mist before following her. She wondered if he was looking toward where the temple had been or perhaps where it was moving to. She also wondered how much truth he had told her. Lady Naidoo had lied to her once. And Abelardus had been willing to use her and Leonidas, if not sacrifice them, to buy time for his people to escape. Dare she hope that what he said would actually help?
”We'll find out,” she murmured. ”We'll find out.”
Epilogue.
Alisa walked into her cabin, propped her fists on her hips, and scowled around at the interior.
As soon as they had flown out of Arkadius's...o...b..t and she had been able to leave the Nomad in the hands of the autopilot, she had finagled her crew into helping her check all the areas that Captain Khazan had walked through on her way in to chat. Chat and plant a homing device, apparently. Beck and Yumi and Mica were still searching the cargo hold. Alisa had checked the handful of niches and crevices in the corridor leading to her cabin, peeking behind all the hatches along the way.
She headed for the desk. That had been where they had spoken, though Khazan could have stuck something tiny and innocent-looking on any wall. She might have simply flicked it into the bed sheets. She had been sitting right next to the bunk, and it wasn't as if Alisa had found a lot of time to do laundry lately.
Grumbling, she grabbed the soft minkling blanket and shook it, listening for the clink of something falling out.
A knock sounded at the hatch behind her.
”Come in,” Alisa said, tossing the blanket into a heap on the floor as Leonidas walked in.
He looked down at it and raised his eyebrows.
Alisa, rummaging through her sheets, only glanced at him.
”If you're not too busy eviscerating your bedding, the doctor and I have come up with a promising set of coordinates to check.” Leonidas held up his small netdisc.
”We're going to Cleon Moon before we check anything.” Alisa shook out the top sheet, managing to avoid snapping the corners at him.
”This is nearly on the way.”
”As nearly on the way as the Trajean Asteroid Belt was to Perun?” Alisa tossed the sheet onto the pile with the blanket and patted down the bottom sheet.
”That was more of a scenic detour.”
”I'm not sure that's what I'd call a mining s.h.i.+p overrun by pirates wearing scalps like jewelry.”
”I was thinking of the asteroids. Some of them had aesthetic interest.”
”If you say so.” Alisa stopped searching for long enough to stick her hand on her hip and look at him. She had taken Abelardus on as a pa.s.senger, since he had given her more information on finding Jelena than anyone else had, but she was not enthused about using her s.h.i.+p to hunt for an artifact capable of destroying planets.
Leonidas was wrinkling his nose. ”I believe you have dust mites in here.”
”Are your cybernetically enhanced nostrils telling you that?”
”I can see them floating in the light from your lamp.”
”Those are motes, not mites.” Or so Alisa hoped. The s.h.i.+p did need new mattresses, especially in the crew cabins. But the s.h.i.+p needed new everything, and other systems were far more critical than beds.
”Hm,” Leonidas said noncommittally.
”Does this mean you're going to refuse to have your ma.s.sage done in my cabin?”
She expected him to dismiss the comment without answering. After all, he hadn't seemed any more enthusiastic over the idea of a ma.s.sage than he had been about the ear rub she had offered him a few weeks earlier.
”I hadn't considered appropriate locations for such things,” he said. ”Have you collected suitable rocks?” He peered toward the foot of the bed, as if a nice collection of river stones would be piled there.
”Not yet, but I exfoliated my elbows in the sanibox this morning.” She pushed up her sleeve and displayed one for his perusal.
”I'm certain they would make interesting tools.”
”Careful, Leonidas. You keep calling my body parts interesting, and I'll be so overcome with ardor that I'll throw myself at you.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Well, banter wasn't his strong suit. She should be tickled he had played along for a while. Further, it had been many days since he called her humor inappropriate. Maybe it was growing on him.
”Let's see the netdisc,” Alisa said, waving him to the seat at the desk.
Leonidas nodded, a hint of relief entering his eyes. She tried not to find it depressing that he would rather talk about the doctor's mission than her throwing herself at him.
He laid the flat disc on the desk, choosing to stand rather than sit, and waved a hand over it to call up the holodisplay. It opened to a star map and coordinates.
”How did you already find a location?” Alisa sat at the desk so she could call up her own netdisc and type in the digits.
”We scoured the Sta.r.s.eer database files that Dominguez copied while he was in the library. There were only six nursery rhymes and one old ballad that referred to the Staffs of Lore, with only two being nonsensical enough that we thought clues might be buried within the words.”
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