Part 8 (2/2)
He almost tipped backwards when he found himself face to face with someone he hadn't even known was there. A woman, average height, average weight, brown hair drawn back in a smooth club; her skin was s.p.a.ce-pale and faintly reddened across the cheeks, as if the IR filters on a suit hadn't quite protected her. She wore a sleek s.p.a.ce-black uniform with dull silver epaulets and four pewter-colored bands at each wrist. An insignia with a stylized sun and Earth-Moon dyad clung over her heart.
The political officer, who was obviously unconcerned by Mongoose's ostentatious display of sensory equipment.
Mongoose absorbed her tendrils in like a startled anemone, pressing the warm underside of her head to Irizarry's scalp where the hair was thinning. He was surprised she didn't vanish down his s.h.i.+rt, because he felt her trembling against his neck.
The political officer didn't extend her hand. ”Mr. Irizarry? You're a hard man to find. I'm Intelligence Colonel Sadhi Sanderson. I'd like to ask you a few quick questions, please.”
”I'm, uh, a little busy right now,” Irizarry said, and added uneasily, ”Ma'am.” The last thing he wanted was to offend her.
Sanderson looked up at Mongoose. ”Yes, you would appear to be hunting,” she said, her voice dry as scouring powder. ”That's one of the things I want to talk about.”
Oh s.h.i.+t. He had kept out of the political officer's way for a day and a half, and really that was a pretty good run, given the obvious tensions between Lee and Sanderson, and the things he'd heard in the Transient Barracks: the gillies were all terrified of Sanderson, and noseemed to have a good word for Lee. Even the Christians, mouths thinned primly, could say of Lee only that she didn't actively persecute them. Irizarry had been stuck on a steels.h.i.+p with a Christian congregation for nearly half a year once, and he knew their eagerness to speak well of everyone; he didn't know whether that was actually part of their faith, or just a survival tactic, but when Elder Dawson said, ”She does not trouble us,” he understood quite precisely what that meant.
Of Sanderson, they said even less, but Irizarry understood that, too. There was no love lost between the extremist cults and the government. But he'd heard plenty from the ice miners and dock workers and particularly from the crew of an impounded steels.h.i.+p who were profanely eloquent on the subject. Upshot: Colonel Sanderson was new in town, cleaning house, and profoundly not a woman you wanted to f.u.c.k with.
”I'd be happy to come to your office in an hour, maybe two?” he said. ”It's just that-”
Mongoose's grip on his scalp tightened, sudden and sharp enough that he yelped; he realized that her head had moved back toward the duct while he fenced weakly with Colonel Sanderson, and now it was nearly in the duct, at the end of a foot and a half of iridescent neck.
”Mr. Irizarry?”
He held a hand up, because really this wasn't a good time, and yelped again when Mongoose reached down and grabbed it. He knew better than to forget how fluid her was, that it was really no more than a compromise with the dimension he could sense her in, but sometimes it surprised him anyway.
And then Mongoose said, Nagina, and if Colonel Sanderson hadn't been standing right there, her eyebrows indicating that he was already at the very end of the slack she was willing to cut, he would have cursed aloud. Short of a banders.n.a.t.c.h-and that could still be along any time now, don't forget, Irizarry-a breeding rath was the worst news they could have.
”Your ches.h.i.+re seems unsettled,” Sanderson said, not sounding in the least alarmed. ”Is there a problem?”
”She's eager to eat. And, er. She doesn't like strangers.” It was as true as anything you could say about Mongoose, and the violent colors cycling down her tendrils gave him an idea what her chromatoph.o.r.es were doing behind his head.
”I can see that,” Sanderson said. ”Cobalt and yellow, in that stippled pattern-and flickering in and out of phase-she's acting aggressive, but that's fear, isn't it?”
Whatever Irizarry had been about to say, her observation stopped him short. He blinked at her-like a gilly, he thought uncharitably-and only realized he'd taken yet another step back when the warmth of the bulkhead pressed his coveralls to his spine.
”You know,” Sanderson said mock-confidentially, ”this entire corridor reeks of toves. So let me guess: it's not just toves anymore.”
Irizarry was still stuck at her being able to read Mongoose's colors. ”What do you know about ches.h.i.+res?” he said.
She smiled at him as if at a slow student. ”Rather a lot. I was on the Jenny Lind as an ensign-there was a ches.h.i.+re on board, and I saw... It's not the sort of thing you forget, Mr. Irizarry, having been there once.” Something complicated crossed her face-there for a flash and then gone. ”The ches.h.i.+re that died on the Jenny Lind was called Demon,” Irizarry said, carefully. ”Her partner was Long Mike Spider. You knew them?”
”Spider John,” Sanderson said, looking down at the backs of her hands. She picked a cuticle with the opposite thumbnail. ”He went by Spider John. You have the ches.h.i.+re's name right, though.”
When she looked back up, the arch of her carefully shaped brow told him he hadn't been fooling anyone.
”Right,” Irizarry said. ”Spider John.”
”They were friends of mine.” She shook her head. ”I was just a pup. First billet, and I was a.s.signed as Demon's liaison. Spider John liked to say he and I had the same job. But I couldn't make the captain believe him when he tried to tell her how bad it was.”
”How'd you make it off after the banders.n.a.t.c.h got through?” Irizarry asked. He wasn't foolish enough to think that her confidences were anything other than a means of demonstrating to him why he could trust her, but the frustration and tired sadness sounded sincere.
”It went for Spider John first-it must have known he was a threat. And Demon-she threw herself at it, never mind it was five times her size. She bought us time to get to the panic pod and Captain Golovnina time to get to the core overrides. ” She paused. ”I saw it, you know. Just a glimpse. Wriggling through this... this rip in the air, like a big gaunt hound ripping through a hole in a blanket with knotty paws. I spent years wondering if it got my scent. Once they scent prey, you know, they never stop... . ”
She trailed off, raising her gaze to meet his. He couldn't decide if the furrow between her eyes was embarra.s.sment at having revealed so much, or the calculated cataloguing of his response.
”So you recognize the smell, is what you're saying.”
She had a way of answering questions with other questions. ”Am I right about the raths?”
He nodded. ”A breeder.”
She winced.
He took a deep breath and stepped away from the bulkhead. ”Colonel Sanderson-I have to get it now if I'm going to get it at all.”
She touched the microwave pulse pistol at her hip. ”Want some company?”
He didn't. Really, truly didn't. And if he had, he wouldn't have chosen Kadath Station's political officer. But he couldn't afford to offend her... and he wasn't licensed to carry a weapon.
”All right,” he said and hoped he didn't sound as grudging as he felt. ”But don't get in Mongoose's way.”
Colonel Sanderson offered him a tight, feral smile. ”Wouldn't dream of it.”
The only thing that stank more than a pile of live toves was a bunch of half-eaten ones.
”Going to have to vacuum-scrub the whole sector,” Sanderson said, her breath hissing through her filters.
If we live long enough to need to, Irizarry, thought, but had the sense to keep his mouth shut. You didn't talk defeat around a politico. And if you were unfortunate enough to come to the attention of one, you certainly didn't let her see you thinking it.
Mongoose forged on ahead, but Irizarry noticed she was careful to stay within the range of his lights, and at least one of her tendrils stayed focused back on him and Sanderson at all times. If this were a normal infestation, Mongoose would be scampering along the corridor ceilings, leaving scattered bits of half-consumed tove and streaks of bioluminescent ichor in her wake. But this time, she edged along, testing each surface before her with quivering barbels so that Irizarry was reminded of a tentative spider or an exploratory octopus.
He edged along behind her, watching her colors go dim and cautious. She paused at each intersection, testing the air in every direction, and waited for her escort to catch up.
The service tubes of Kadath Station were mostly large enough for Irizarry and Sanderson to walk single-file through, though sometimes they were obliged to crouch, and once or twice Irizarry found himself slithering on his stomach through tacky half-dried tove slime. He imagined-he hoped it was imagining-that he could sense the thinning and stretch of reality all around them, see it in the warp of the tunnels and the bend of deck plates. He imagined that he glimpsed faint shapes from the corners of his eyes, caught a whisper of sound, a hint of scent, as of something almost there.
Hypochondria, he told himself firmly, aware that that was the wrong word and not really caring. But as he dropped down onto his belly again, to squeeze through a tiny access point-this one clogged with the fresh corpses of newly-slaughtered toves-he needed all the comfort he could invent.
He almost ran into Mongoose when he'd cleared the hole. She scuttled back to him and huddled under his chest, tendrils writhing, so close to out of phase that she was barely a warm shadow. When he saw what was on the other side, he wished he'd invented a little more.
This must be one of Kadath Station's recycling and reclamation centers, a bowl ten meters across sweeping down to a pile of rubbish in the middle. These were the sorts of places you always found minor tove infestations. s.h.i.+ps and stations might be supposed to be kept clear of vermin, but in practice, the dimensional stresses of sharing the s.p.a.celanes with boojums meant that just wasn't possible. And in Kadath, somehadn't been doing their job.
Sanderson touched his ankle, and Irizarry hastily drew himself aside so she could come through after. He was suddenly grateful for her company.
He really didn't want to be here alone.
Irizarry had never seen a tove infestation like this, not even on the Jenny Lind. The entire roof of the chamber was thick with their sluglike bodies, long lure-tongues dangling as much as half a meter down. Small flitting things-young raths, near-transparent in their phase s.h.i.+ft-filled the s.p.a.ce before him. As Irizarry watched, one blundered into the lure of a tove, and the tove contracted with sudden convulsive force. The rath never stood a chance.
Nagina, Mongoose said. Nagina, Nagina, Nagina.
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