Part 78 (1/2)

Fleur sighed. ”Sa.s.sinak, I'm nearly forty years older than you, and I know that sort of comment makes p.r.i.c.kles go up your spine.” Sa.s.sinak had to chuckle. Fleur was so right. ”And I know you don't want to hear that another forty years of experience means additional understanding. But!” Her beautifully manicured finger levelled at Sa.s.sinak's eyes. ”Did Abe know more than you in the slave depot?”

”Of course. I was just a child.”

”And if he were alive now, would you still respect his greater age and experience?”

”Well ...” She could see it coming, but she didn't have to like it. Her expression must have shown that, because Fleur laughed aloud, a silvery bell-like peal that brought an answering laugh from Sa.s.sinak.

”So please trust me now,” Fleur said, once more serious. ”You have become what Abe dreamed of. I have kept an eye on you in the media, I know. But the higher you go in Fleet, the more you will need unclouded judgment. If you allow the bitterness, the unfairness, of your childhood and Abe's death, to overwhelm your natural warmth, you will become unfair in your own way. You must be more than a pirate chaser, more than vengeance personified. Fleet tends to shape its members toward narrow interests, rigid reactions, even in I die best. Haven't you found that some of your difficul-I ties down here arise from that?”

Put that way, some of them certainly had. She had I developed the typical s.p.a.cefarer's distaste for planets. f She had not bothered to cultivate the skills needed to 1 enjoy them. The various gangs in the tunnels seemed

alien, even as she tried to mold them into a working unit.

”Abe used to say to me,” Fleur said, now patting at If her hair, ”that growth and development can't stop for stars, rank or travel. You keep growing and keep Abe's I memory green. Don't let the Paradens shape the rest of

your life, as they shaped the first of it.” ”Yes, ma'am.”

”Now tell me, what do you plan to do with all this scruffy crowd?”

Sa.s.sinak grinned at her, half-rueful and half-deter-I mined.

”Chase pirates, ma'am, and then worry about whether I've gotten too rigid.”

But when it came down to it, none of them actually knew where The Parchandri was located in a physical sense. Sa.s.sinak frowned.

”We ought to be able to get that from the data systems, with the right codes,” she said. ”You said you had people good at that.”

”But we don't have any of the current codes. The only times we've tried to tap into the secure datahnes, anything but the public ones, they've sent police after us. They can tell where our tap is, an' everything.”

264.

”Sa.s.sinak?” Aygar tapped her shoulder. She started to brush him aside, but remembered his previous good surprises. ”Yes?”

”My friend, that student ...”

”The one who boasted to you he could slap through the data]inks without getting caught? Yes. But he's not here and how would we find him?”

”I have his callcode. From any public comsite, he said.”

”But there aren't any-are there? Down here?”

She glanced at the ragged group. Some of them nodded, and Coris answered her.

”Yes, up in the public tunnels. There's a few we might get to, without being spotted. Not all of us, of course.”

”There's that illegal one in the 248 vertical,” someone else said. ”This maintenance worker put it in, patched it to the regular public lines so he could call in bets during his s.h.i.+ft. We used to listen to him.”

”Where's the 248 vertical?” Sa.s.sinak asked.

Not that far away, although it took several hours of careful zigging about to get to it. Twice they saw hunting patrols, one in the blue-gray of the city police, and one in the Pollys' orange. Their careless-sweep of the tunnels did not impress Sa.s.sinak. They seemed to be content to walk through, without investigating all hatches and side tunnels. When she mentioned this to Coris, he hunched his shoulders.

”Bet they're planning to gas the system. Now they're looking for easy prey, girls down on their luck, kids . . . something to have fim with.”

”Gas! You mean poison gas? Or knockout gas?”

”They've used both, before. 'Bout three years ago, they must've killed a thousand or more, over toward the shuttle station area. I was clear out here, and all it did to us was make us heave everything for a day or so. But I heard there'd been street crime, subways hijacked, that land of thing.”

Sa.s.sinak fingered the small kit in her pocket. She had brought along the detox membrane and primer that Fleet used against riot control gas, but would it work .

265.

against everything? She didn't want to find out by using it, and she had only the one She put that thought away and briefed Aygar on what to tell, and what not to tell, his student friend. If only she'd had a chance to evaluate that friend for herself. No telling whose agent he was, unless he was just a student playing pretend spy games. If so, he'd soon find out how exciting the real ones could be.

Two of the group went through the hatch into 248 vertical ahead of Aygar, and then called him through. This shaft, they'd explained, had enough regular traffic to keep the group out of it, except on special occasions.

Sa.s.sinak waited, wis.h.i.+ng she could make the call. Aygar was only a boy, really, from a backwoods world: he knew nothing about intrigue. It would be like him to call up this ”friend” and blurt out everything on an unsecured line. She kept herself from fidgeting with difficulty. She must not increase their nervousness. How many hours had slipped by? Would Arly be worried yet? Would anyone?

Aygar bounded back through the hatch, his youthful strength and health a vivid contrast to the underworlders' air of desperation.

”He wants to meet me,” Aygar said. ”He says the students would like to help.”

”Help? Help what?”

Sa.s.sinak knew nothing of civilian students, except what the media reported. It was clear they weren't anything like cadets.

”Help with the coup,” Aygar said as if that should explain it. ”End the tyranny of greed and power, he says.”

”We aren't starting a coup,” Sa.s.sinak said, then thought about it.

While in one sense she didn't think she was overthrowing a government, the government had certainly sent riot squads after her, as if she were. Did they think she was working with a bunch of renegade students? Did someone else have a coup planned . . . and had they stumbled into it, and was that , . . ?

Her brain seemed to explode, as intuition and logic 266.

both flared. Aygar was giving her a puzzled look, as she went on, more quietly.

”At least, not the one he's thinking about. Exactly. Now, what kind of help can he give us? Can he find The Parchandri?”

”He just said to meet him. And where.” Aygar was looking stubborn again, he could not fail to realize that he was being used, and no one liked that.

”In public territory. Great. And you're about as easy to disguise as a torn uniform at inspection.”

”Fleur's the one who taught us all about disguises,” Coris said. ”Although, it won't be easy with that one.”

Sa.s.sinak felt almost too tired to think, but she had to. She pulled herself together and said, ”We'll go ask her. We certainly can't stroll out looking like this. And we'll get some rest before we go anywhere, because I notice that Aygar looks almost as exhausted as I feel. In the meantime, Coris, if you have any maps of the underground areas, I'd like to see them.”

She hoped that would give them all the idea that she had a specific plan in mind.