Geantraí: Face Off

“Good morning, harper,” the scarred man says with malicious cheer when dawn has drawn a few hardy souls to the Bar. Praisegod is behind the counter—to all appearances, he might never have left his post. So, too, the scarred man, who sits once more in his niche. The room is redolent with the pasty odors of oatmeal and eggs and daal. “I hope you slept well,” he says. “After a time, the crack of the overnight ballistic runs can grow quite restful and the morning cargo drops little more than a cock’s crow.”

The harper spares him a blurred look and asks Praisegod for a cup of something more lively than she is. She carries the coffee to the table by the niche and slowly puts herself outside of it. The scarred man’s plate is heavy with daal and baked beans, with scrambled eggs and cold, fatty bacon, with sautéed mushrooms. She spares this feast no more than a horrified glance and notes that he seems in a good humor.

“Every day is a promise,” he replies. “Compared to the night mare, we have an easy ride.”

“And what nightmares visit your sleep?” It is an idle question—she is not yet fully awake—but the silence of his answer draws her from her drug. He dips a piece of naan into the daal and shoves it in his mouth. The sauces drip and pool in the upturned cleft of his chin. “None that you would care to ride,” he says just before he swallows.

Silence then draws on toward the point of discomfort. But it is from a point of greater discomfort to one of lesser. The scarred man begrudges her: “Yet there are dreams that come during the day. Sometimes I think you are not quite real, and I am speaking only to another part of my own mind. I’m not sure.”

“Do you not know your own mind, then?”

A facetious question, meant for humor, the words push the scarred man deeper into his niche. “No,” he whispers. “I do not.”

Now the discomfort is real and the harper hurriedly excuses herself to visit the buffet table. Few are the guests who stay at the Bar, fewer still those who breakfast there; and so, few were the choices presented to her. She stares at the unsavory dishes. The bacon is cold and more fat than meat. The eggs have congealed into something resembling rubber. She settles finally on a bowl of oatmeal and some naan, a small glass of muskmelon juice. With these she returns to the niche and is only a little surprised to find the scarred man still there, and still gazing silently at his meal.

“When we parted last night,” she prompts, “Hugh and the Fudir were sliding toward Jehovah with the ’Federal courier.”

The scarred man says nothing and the harper fears she has stopped up the well with her remarks. Then he looks up and fixes her with his gaze. “What is your story? Perhaps you should be the one here telling tales.”

“Every man, every woman, has a story. But some are less interesting than others. I’ve come to learn of the Dancer. My own tale is far less than that.” She does not ask about his personal story, although she suspects there may be a goltraí in it. She is not sure she would want to hear it; yet the question lingers unspoken in the air between them.

Eventually, the scarred man sighs and begins the dance anew.

“Bridget ban,” the scarred man says, “arrived at Peacock Junction…

…a world of lush colors and bubbling waters, and of careless men and women. There, the tropics run from pole to pole and the ocean currents are delightfully warm and languid. It is a world on which not much happens, and what does happen happens slowly. They have a Seanaid of sorts: garrulous old men and women who meet in an open amphitheater during the dry season, and not at all during the rains. Someday they may pass a law, but there is no hurry.

The universe is in motion: planets and stars spinning, galaxies swirling, starships sliding from star to star along superluminal channels in the fabric of space. There is no reason why any world in such a universe should be so much at rest as Peacock Junction.

But while Peacock has very few laws, she is rich in customs; and customs have the greater force. A law may be appealed; but from custom there is no recourse. When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days’ grace. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s manu; and ever afterward he repeated his confession in the Hall of Remonstration to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom.

Compared to the great roundabout of luminal highways that converge on the worlds of Jehovah, Peacock barely deserves the name of junction. Route 66 splits off from the Silk Road and heighs off toward Foreganger and Valency, but that is all. In the early days of settlement, it was thought that proximity to the blue giant at Sapphire Point would endow Peacock with a great many roads; and much effort was spent on the survey of its approaches, but the tenor of scientific thought now runs in the other direction. And a good thing, too; for nothing tempts the highwaymen of the Spiral Arm more than a sun with plentiful roads.

Shalmandaro Spaceport was the primary STC repository for Peacock Roads, and so it was to this gracile orangestone tower that Bridget ban came on the trail of the phantom fleet. The tower was inlaid with gold and decorated with pastel murals of Peacock scenery and of those few ’Cockers who had ever faced anything requiring heroism. On the building’s western facade, a bulbous extrusion eyed distant Polychrome Mountain and the tea plantations that tiled her slopes. There, trace elements in the soils and the artifice of bioneering gave the tea fields sundry colors and the mountain its name.

Despite the building’s importance, there was no security screen at the entrance. Bridget ban was not surprised. It was of a piece with this lackadaisical world. But after she had passed through and was standing before the lift tubes in the great, multistoried atrium, she gave the matter a second thought. Indolent need not mean stupid. Indeed, indolence often required considerable ingenuity. So she returned to the vestibule and studied its walls with greater care, and discovered amid the wild swirls and colors with which the ’Cockers embellished any flat surface the lenticels and digitizers of various sensors. She nodded her approval at one camera eye, her opinion of the ’Cockers rising by a notch.

Konmi Pulawayo was not in the Director’s office when, thanks to typically vague directions from staff, Bridget ban had finally located it. The room did not strike her as very official. Offices ought to appear functional: with desks, storage drives, comm units, hard-copy files, and the like. They ought, in fact, to have walls. They ought not have a whispering waterfall and a glade guarded by colorful parrots and sweet larks. A parrot is not a receptionist; and a hammock is not an office chair.

“So where,” she asked one green-and-yellow bird, “is your master?”

The parrot shuffled a bit on its perch, cocked its head, and squawked. “Whaddaview! Lookaddaview!”

Bridget ban snorted, turned away, then wondered if there was something more serious under this frivolous facade. The ’Cockers were famous across the Spiral Arm for their bioneering. Perhaps the parrot was a receptionist, after all. Yet there was nothing about the bird that suggested it was anything more than a bird. The skull was not of an encouraging volume; its attention span fleeting. It glanced at the intruder repeatedly, but that would be expected of any half-wild beast. Its exclamation was probably no more than a trained reflex.

But why train a bird to make that response to that question? Answer: the Director took his breaks in the viewing room she had noticed from the outside. She glanced at her watch. It was early for a break—unless, as she suspected, ’Cockers inverted the times devoted to work and leisure.

A passing technician, frail and featureless as an elf, bare-chested and wearing a tool belt over his “srong,” told her the lounge was at the end of Redfruit Lane, and pointed to a bush growing along the side of the “corridor.” Bridget ban thanked him and he nodded vaguely, plucking a “redfruit” to eat as he sauntered off. She wondered if he was on his way to repair something and how long that repair would await his arrival.

The redfruits wound through the seventeenth floor, intersecting at times with other winding paths marked by other bushes. There were no walls, but occasionally there were lines of shrubs or trees, or rivulets crossed by short footbridges, each evidently intended to mark the boundary of a “room.” Not one was straight. There might not be a right angle in the entire building. She did see individuals working at screens and chatting casually to hologram images. It could not all be personal activity, could it? Somehow, cross-stellar and in-system traffic in the Junction was choreographed; somehow lighters and bumboats were lifted and landed. Someone out there must be working!

Eventually, curiosity—or surrender—overcame her and she plucked a redfruit for herself. Its skin was soft and plump and the texture, when she had bitten into it, crispy. The taste was succulent and sweet, suggesting both apple and cherry in its ancestry. She had to remind herself that she was inside a large building and the groves through which she wound were only clever artifacts.

The lounge was entirely transparent; even the floors and furniture. In effect, one seemed to be walking in midair, and Bridget ban could see past her boots the traffic far below. Only the people and a few other objects—brightly patterned cushions and the like—were stubbornly opaque. Directly ahead, Polychrome Mountain had been artfully framed between two other high towers so that it appeared larger and closer than it actually was. She wondered if the ’Cockers had erected those two buildings precisely to achieve that effect.

Bridget ban wore a green-and-gold coverall with the blue facings and collar pips of “The Particular Service.” Above her left breast were discreetly pinned two of the twelve decorations to which she was entitled: the Grand Star and the Badge of Night. The Kennel called it “undress uniform,” but she thought herself the most completely dressed person in the lounge, perhaps in the entire building. Some ’Cockers she saw carried casualness of dress to its logical, and ultimate, conclusion.

A few inquiries eventually led her finally to the Director. She had wondered from the name whether Konmi Pulawayo was male or female and, after having been introduced, continued to wonder. Most of the human race was bimodally distributed, but the bioneers of Peacock had achieved the bell-shaped curve, with most inhabitants clustered around a sort of genderless mean and rather fewer out near masculine or feminine extremes. Pulawayo might have been a fine-featured man or a boyish woman. Large, liquid eyes set in an androgynous face gave no clue. There was one way to be certain—and, judging by what she had seen so far, not a way entirely out of the question—but she was struck by the disturbing notion that lifting the Director’s srong would not lift the uncertainty.

Tentatively, she designated Pulawayo as “she,” and firmly fixed that pronoun in mind.

The Director called for tea. On Peacock, that was a foregone conclusion. The variegated flavors and fragrances unique to Polychrome Mountain constituted the planet’s primary export, and drinking it was an act of patriotism.

Pulawayo had preceded her tea order by a slight cough, by which Bridget ban concluded that she was “headwired” and the cough was how she activated the link. While they waited, the elf regarded the Hound with a smile bordering on amusement and studied her with palpable interest.

“Zo,” she said through near-motionless lips, “wuzzahoundooneer?”

The Peacock dialect ran words together and softened its consonants. Indeed, a common joke in the League was that on Peacock, the use of a consonant was subject to a heavy fine. Lazy speech for lazy lips, thought Bridget ban. Her implant sharpened the phonemes to Gaelactic Standard. So. What’s a Hound doing here? the Director had asked.

In answer, she produced her credentials—by ancient tradition, a golden badge of metallo-ceramic that glowed when held by its rightful bearer. “I’m investigating the battle that took place here recently.” It was more than that, of course. The phantom fleet had taken something from the pirates—a prehuman artifact of great value and possibly greater power. But such secrets were best held close, lest they pique greed and ambition.

The Director barely glanced at the badge. “Oh, that,” she said. “No battle. Battle needs two sides. Ambushers caltroped the exit ramp and swissed whichever ships came out next. Good luck, they caught a pirate fleet with top booty and their shields down. Nuisance.”

“Aye. Such lawlessness…”

But the Director had not been concerned about lawlessness. “Clean up the mess,” she complained. “Sweepers still out there. Sent swifties down the Silk Road with warnings. Placed marker buoys. Duchess of Dragomar took damage coming off next day. Didn’t want more ships running into shards. Bad for tourism.”

As she spoke, she muttered under her breath, annoying the Hound. Bridget ban tried to make out what she was saying, but the subvocalization was too slight. Irritated, she said, “And have ye identified the combatants?”

“Pirates were from Cynthia, barbarians coming back heavy from somewhere—”

“From New Eireann. We know about them. The survivors reached Sapphire Point while I was there.”

“Zo. Heavy with loot from this New Eireann place. Lost their vanguard on the caltrops. Other ships jittered. Two skated off on hyperbolic. One braked into elliptical. Saw Cerenkov flashes, so some ships reached the high-c’s but missed the channel and grounded in the mud.”

And those who escaped down the Silk Road had been destroyed by Fir Li’s border squadron. “And what about the ambushing fleet?”

The Director held up a hand palm out. “One sec.” Then she closed her eyes. “No, no, no, darlings. Move Atreus 9-1-7 into High ’Cock Orbit. Low ’Cock ICC 3-2-9-1. ‘First come,’ dears. Do not, repeat not, land lighters from Chettinad Voyager…Because Heart of Oak is still on the designated landing grid, that’s why. Where,” and this was said with deadly sweetness, “are the tugs?” A pause. “I don’t care. King Peter is off the active field. Heart of Oak is still on it. I can’t land Chettinad Voyager with the field cluttered up that way.” Pulawayo sighed, rolled her eyes in mute appeal to beings unseen, and smiled at Bridget ban. “Sorry. New controller. Needed full attention.” She stretched her arms over her head and arched her back. “Ah, here’s the tea. I asked for Wenderfell, a very nice blend with a spicy aroma and an aftertaste of clove.”

The server who brought the tea on an elaborately chased silver platter was refreshingly thick-limbed and hairy. He poured a stream of iridescent tea into cups of near transparent china, painted on the outside with a colorful hunting scene from ancient times: an elderly guide pointing into the distance and a quartet of men in hip boots carrying double-barreled pellet guns. In the background, a flock of aboriginal ducks arched like a feathered bridge into the sky. On the other side, the cup bore a painting of a duck in flight, rendered in subtle colors. It was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and despair had been imposed somehow on its immobile features. The shimmering tea, swirling behind the translucent ceramic, gave it the illusion of desperate motion.

Pulawayo handed her the cup, contriving to touch hands as she did. Bridget ban took it and waited to see what all this portended. “You’re paraperceptic,” she said.

The Director seemed disappointed in the response. “Oh. Yes. Only duplex, I fear. Half my brain—the logical, calculating half, I hope”—she giggled—“is overseeing the space traffic controllers. The other half…Well, here I am. Do you like the teacups?”

Bridget ban thought there was also an element of calculation in the half-brain she was facing, but she said nothing. “Ye painted these cups yourself,” she guessed.

Pulawayo waved a hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a hobby. You should see our export ware. But I’m such a silly. You were asking about the ’bushers. They matched trajectory with one of the treasure ships—and wasn’t that a pretty piece of work at high-v?”

“I know what they did. I’m trying to find out who they were.”

A blithe shrug. “They never said.”

Suppressing an exasperated retort, Bridget ban explained: “The, ah, ’bushers ne’er passed through Sapphire Point, so they must hae gone toward either Jehovah or Foreganger. If ye’ve no idea o’ their homeworld, at least tell me which direction they went.”

The Director waved her hand. “Oh, surely you can’t suspect Foreganger or Jehovah. Hijacking pirates isn’t Foreganger’s style, and Jehovah’s a turtle—keeps its head tucked in.”

“Of course not,” the Hound explained patiently, “but the phantom fleet must hae passed through one o’ them, and their STC could tell me where they went next. Now, I could be tossing a coin tae pick one, but I’d lose a fortnight running down and back, should I be guessing wrong. Those are twa of the busiest interchanges in this region o’ the Spiral Arm, and that’s a lot of straw to sift for one flotilla of needles. Unless,” she added sarcastically, “the ambushers fight a battle at each interchange to draw attention to themselves.”

The Director laughed. “Oh, of course. How silly of me. But…We don’t know which ramp they came off. They must’ve entered under heavy traffic, hiding themselves in a forest of arrivals. No beacons sent ahead. Incoming’s supposed to hail the port. Can’t always see ’em at high-v, y’know.” Pulawayo had reverted to choppy sentences, by which Bridget ban deduced that her paraperception was imperfect. When the Director split her attention and subvocalized, she could not frame complex sentences.

“Then, which road are they after leaving on?” the Hound asked with growing exasperation.

“Don’t know. Swung around…” Pulawayo held a hand up, said waidasec, and stopped the alternate conversation with a curt, Handle it yourself, dear. Then, “They swung around grabbing space like that ancient god, Tarzan. The aether strings are still rippling out that way. We thought they meant to circle around to the Silk Road entrances. But they never showed. All that confusion—do you know how many ships were in the sky at the time? And stealthed the way the ’bushers were—well…” She shrugged. “We lost them.”

“Ye lost them,” Bridget ban repeated. She could well believe in ’Cocker sloppiness, but this beggared the imagination. The Director was, as the Terrans were wont to say, “blowing smoke.” Bridget ban had listened to evasions spun by the best of them, and recognized all the symptoms. “I see. Is that a common problem around the Junction?”

The Director muttered, No, no, no. I’m off-line, then, “What do you mean?”

“Losing track of the traffic out in the coopers. Does that happen often?”

The elf’s face hardened as much as elf faces could. “We do well enough.”

“Ye noticed the battle itself, I’m sure. Ye must hae gotten some positional fixes. I can extrapolate origin and destination from those.”

“They changed vectors three times while we did track them, and might have done anything while they were in the black; so I don’t think the fixes we did get can help you.”

Bridget ban spoke as if to a child. “I’ll be judging what I can and can nae do. I need to review your transit records.” She was already proffering a memostick when the Director shook her head.

“Oh, dear. I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

This was more than evasion. This was obstruction. But the why of it eluded the Hound. Was Peacock protecting the phantom fleet? She began to suspect that if she did not obtain the STC records soon, she never would. At least, not the original records. The Director was, as the Terrans said, “playing for time.”

She flashed her badge once more. “I’m afraid ye’ve nae choice. League regulations. I ‘demand and require’ your information in the name o’ Tully O’Connor, Ardry of High Tara and president o’ the League o’ the Periphery.” Maybe the formal language would kick start the woman.

But the Director smiled sweetly. “And I’m afraid your ‘high king’ doesn’t mass much here. Peacock’s not a Member State.”

Bridget ban reared back. “Nae a Member? Ridiculous…” But her implant shook hands with the library aboard her ship and confirmed the fact. No agreement was on record. Was her gazetteer deficient? “The Treaty of Amity and Common Purpose was submitted one hundred and fifty metric years ago.”

“The Seanaid is still debating it. We don’t rush into things here. Oh…” She waved a hand. “It’s our custom to cooperate with the League. But we don’t cooperate because we’re ordered. We do it because we’re nicely asked.”

Bridget ban swallowed a sarcastic observation and forced a “please” through smiling teeth.

Pulawayo ran a finger along the back of the Hound’s hand. “I said nicely asked.”

Bridget ban finally understood what the Director wanted in exchange for cooperation. She was no stranger to bribery, even sexual bribery, but casual sex could still shock her. When she used sex, there was nothing casual about it. It was purposeful, deliberate, and well planned.

The Director misread the pause. “Are you exclusive to men?” she asked. “Because I’m seeing my surgeon later today. I’ve been feeling very male lately.”

Bridget ban greeted this announcement with astonished silence. She could not imagine this…elf containing a single manly impulse. One surge of testosterone and the vessel would shatter. For that matter, anything genuinely feminine would whistle through her as through an empty reed. Those who try to do two things at once, she decided, would seldom do either very well.

Foreganger or Jehovah? She could simply guess, but Jehovah was ten days’ journey and Foreganger closer to twenty. Better an extra day on Peacock to make certain, even if that meant snuggling with Pulawayo. Yet, what guarantee did she have that, even after the bribe, Pulawayo would cooperate? She could imagine an entire series of such delays—always immanently cooperative, never overtly a refusal—until finally a well-doctored set of records would be handed over with great fanfare, cooperative exclamations, and calculated deception.

She wondered if they thought they could doctor the records well enough to deceive a Hound. There were rumors that captains carrying illicit cargoes could “launder” their transits through Peacock Junction, and could drop off radar screens when the need arose. A Hound’s matter, if true, though not to her present purpose; but Peacock might well fear otherwise.

And so the Hound found herself at liberty until evening. The day was one of brilliant clarity. Polychromopolis, the planetary capital, lay in the monsoon belt and the dry season had just begun. The temperature was hot—at or above body temperature, and fans and parasols were common along the streets. Above, in a cloudless sky, a few high white streamers marked the tracks of jetliners and ballistic leapers headed for the antipodes. Below, the recently ended rains had painted the landscape in moist pastels. Flowers of brilliant yellow and orange and red lined the pedestrian walkways beneath the shade of broad, leafy trees. Some of the blossoms would have been known on Old Earth—assuming the origin myths were really true—but others were artifacts unknown to nature: exotic races of palm and orchid and rose and deodar, bearing those ancient names only through courtesy and the contribution of a few ancestral genes.

Passing her on the Embarcadero—the slidewalk from the Port into the main shopping district—were folk from all over the Spiral Arm. She saw pale, squat Jugurthans with their startlingly wide and out-turned noses; Chettinads in tartan kilts and turbans. There were sour-faced, girdled Jehovans muttering over their prayer beads; and gaudy trade-captains from the Greater Hanse whose jewels and rings and robes glittered in the late-morning sunlight. She heard the hooting accents of Alabaster, the flat twang of Megranome, and the nearly incomprehensible jibber-jabber of Terran pack peddlers. Peacock wasn’t a great interchange like Jehovah, but many travelers stopped here for pleasure and relaxation. It was the preferred vacation spot for this region of the Arm.

She noticed how heads turned and eyes flickered in her direction. A Hound? Here? Why? It was the uniform, of course. The concept of a uniform was alien to ’Cockers, perhaps a little perverted. Pulawayo had asked her to wear the uniform tonight.

She stepped onto the Esplanade, a lateral slidewalk traversing the main Portside shopping district known as Rodyadarava. She had no eye for the clothing stores—the Rift would fill with stars before she would prance about in the topless srong that the elves of Peacock favored; and judging by a pair of Jugurthan women passing by, a few sagging tourists might have profited by adopting the same attitude. But a tea shop at the corner of Kairthnashrad caught her eye, and she entered on a whim to seek refuge from the heat.

Inside, she encountered a medley of odors: a hint of vanilla, a suggestion of roses, the unmistakable aroma of Abyalonic holdenblum. On the far wall of the shop, a rack of bins was filled with teas of various colors: blacks and duns and ochres, but also more exotic shades that nature had never intended.

What, she thought in a mood approaching panic, if I only want a cup of tea?

Small round tables had been set up around the shop and on the little plaza outside. Some were at sitting level; others were tall and people stood at them, drinking and chatting. At this time of day, about half the tables were occupied by a mix of sixty-forty, locals to tourists. Two Chettinad traders, in matching kilts and turbans, pondered over a game board. They whispered to each other as Bridget ban passed by.

“Ah, Cu,” said the teakeeper behind the counter. “You have come for a cup of Pleasurepot? Our most famous blend.”

Bridget ban studied the rows of teas. “I’m…not sure.”

The teakeeper laughed. “A more meditative blend, then. I have Gray Thoughts, a private blend the Consortium makes for a colleague of yours; but I’m sure he’d not grudge you a taste of it.”

The Hound had been curious where the teakeeper had learned the form of address the Kennel used among themselves. She could also guess the name of the colleague: Greystroke would have found the name of the blend both amusing and irresistible.

The teakeeper went belowstairs and climbed back with a canister of plain metallic gray. Turning it, he showed her the embossing on the bottom: Greystroke’s personal logo. At her approval, the teakeeper took a carefully measured scoop of the leaves; filled a small, perforated ball; and prepared an infusion—discussing all the while the physics and chemistry involved. Bridget ban only wanted a drink, but the teakeeper would not hand the cup over until a mandatory amount of “steeping” had elapsed. “It’s different for each blend, you see.”

She didn’t see, and did her best to forget after she took the steaming cup away.

The Chettinads were playing shaHmat, and were in the mid-game. Some versions of the game were played in three dimensions. Some used computers and hundreds of pieces with fluctuating fighting qualities. Still others—called “chutes and ladders”—mimicked the superluminal creases of Electric Avenue and allowed game pieces to slipstream rapidly between designated squares. But the Chettinads were playing the true game, unadorned, handling finely carved wooden pieces across a nine-by-nine board of squares.

Red, whose turban was an intricate plaid of green, yellow, and red checks and lines, was engaged in Remour’s Offer. His emperor stood unmoved on the center square of his home row while his minions had pushed forward in a complex arrangement of mutual support. The flanking councilors and leaping hounds were in play on the princess side, although the fortresses still anchored the two ends of his line. The princess was in midfield with a good chance to marry the opposing prince. If White allowed that, his prince would become powerless in any attack on Red. Hence, he was playing McDevitt’s Refusal.

An unstable arrangement, she thought. Complexity upon complexity, and the least wrong move would send it all crashing into chaos from which only the most nimble thinker could pluck victory. White’s prince was castled, refusing to meet the opposing princess.

After a time in which nothing seemed to happen, White picked up his teacup and sipped. He put it down again. Nothing happened some more.

Then, with a shrug, he sent a White hound leaping out.

A mistake! Bridget ban took a swallow of Gray Thoughts, and leaned forward a little to see how Red would respond.

Red barely noticed. He moved his prince forward one square. “These are bad times,” he commented after a sip from his cup.

White’s turban—richly green, shot through with ochre threads and golden bands—bobbed side to side in agreement. “The ICC grows bold and arrogant. They strut.”

It was the custom of the Chettinad traders when in public to speak in allusions. “Three ships of Sèan Company passed through the Junction yesterday,” said Red. “They paid no duties as poor Chettinads must pay. This was said by a customs officer far gone in her cups.”

“‘Drink makes truth.’”

“‘Wise is the sober man.’”

“Would only that such wisdom extended to the movements of princes.” White advanced a second hound on the other side of the field, threatening Red prince.

“‘Long-lived are the fish that rise not to the bait,’” Red observed, shifting a minion laterally to take a White minion. “Why do our cousins in Sèan Company preen? Strange words have been said. With the aid of sand and iron, they shall make the Ardry himself their minion.” He raised his head from the board and met his companion’s eyes. “Hard words, those; and what did the speaker mean by their saying?”

White shrugged. “It is not for poor Chettinad traders to know such things. To move excellent goods at fair prices is all they desire. The moods and wants of high kings are nothing to them. But what if their rivals should gain such power over kings?”

“Then woe to the poor Chettinad, and to his wives and children.”

Bridget ban placed her cup on its saucer with a tiny click and said, as if to no one in particular, “The Ardry has ears everywhere, but knows not always the meaning of what he hears.”

White bowed his head, and a small smile played across his lips. “May the wisdom of the Ardry increase—or that of his ‘ears.’” Red grunted in amusement.

“The Ardry,” said Bridget ban, “is the servant of the League and its Member States.”

White cupped his chin and studied the board. “The Ardry may be a servant of the League, but he cannot wish to be a servant of Sèan Company.” He moved a councilor down a diagonal.

Red made the sign of the wheel and touched his chakras. “May the Bood forbid such a thing.”

Bridget ban returned to her hotel room and prepared for her “assignation” with Pulawayo. She stripped herself of the uniform, and showered the heat away. Afterward, she inspected the clothing she had brought, mentally inventoried that which remained aboard her ship, and sighed with frustration. Pulawayo had asked that she wear the uniform; but did she really care about the wrapping for the confection she desired? (He, she amended the thought. The surgery was done by now.)

She needn’t worry about dressing seductively. The conclusion was tacitly agreed. So, comfort, convenience, and inconspicuousness were the order of the day. Something she could remove and don with relative ease, and which would not stand out on the street.

Which was sounding more and more like a topless srong in bright, gaudy colors.

She went to the ’face that sat on a desk by the wall and accessed the hotel’s system, accepted a nuisance charge to her bill, and slid out into the information slipstream. She screened on the Director’s name, found it moderately common, and fined up the mesh size with job position and hobby.

Teacup patterns. There! As she had thought, Pulawayo took enormous pride in her…in his hobby—damned genderbending nuisance custom—and had set up an information locus where people could see examples, comment approvingly, and even purchase complete tea sets. Hah. One commentator had written that the designs were insipid.

Well, there was more than one way to practice seduction. If the body’s surrender was a foregone conclusion, that of the mind was not. And what the Hound wanted from the Director was not the body.

She downloaded the pattern for the teacup she had seen at the STC tower and extracted the colors from the duck’s feathers. These, she entered into a drawing program and set it for smooth abstract shapes and long sweeping lines.

The result was a pattern that suggested the duck’s plumage from the teacup without being a mere representation of it. Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. Pulawayo might not consciously notice, but seduction need not be conscious and no one ever made an enemy of a parent by praising the child’s beauty.

When the pattern had downloaded, she consulted Benet’s Sumptuary Guide to the Spiral Arm until she found something she could reasonably wear as a top for a srong: a light poncho used by the Kushkans on ’Bandonope. It was short and made of diaphanous cloth. She entered her personal measurements.

Then she went to a drawer, pulled out two bolts of anycloth she had brought with her, and inserting the data-thread into the port, downloaded the design and the cut into the cloth. The micro-electromechanical weave shimmered and became…a duckwing srong and matching poncho top. The gaudy ensemble would win no kudos in the fashion houses of Hadley Prime, but it would pass for inconspicuous here.

The Director’s home lay in the Nolapatady, a district of the capital easily reached on the maglev’s Sandpipe line. The house proved an oval building of intricately carved dark wood that encircled a central courtyard open to the sky. In the courtyard, interlocking fishponds were fed by an elaborately decorated terracotta rain-catcher and cistern. Planters, atria, and the artful placement of furniture served in lieu of internal walls, so that from any point around the orbit of the house, one could cross to any other point. Overhanging eaves and runnels in the courtyard prevented rainwater from entering the residence itself.

Pulawayo met all of Bridget ban’s fairly low expectations that evening. She—now he—proudly displayed the results of the surgery, and panted and pawed and squeezed and made numerous exclamations of what were apparently intended as signs of masculine appreciation and pleasure. Bridget ban made a few comments herself; but they were planned, and intended to achieve a certain rapport with the Director. She had earlier applied a numbing agent so that she would not be distracted by untoward sensations at crucial moments, but in retrospect she thought that she needn’t have bothered.

There was a Terran proverb she had heard: Practice makes perfect. But Pulawayo had not spent enough continuous time as either man or woman to get much practice at either.

She was slightly nettled that the Director had not noticed the effort she had put into her outfit. The deliberation was not supposed to be noticeable, but some comment would have been welcome. Instead, the Director had pouted a bit that she hadn’t worn her uniform, and the Hound wondered if this indicated some need for dominance. So she took the upper role, told him exactly what to do, praised him when he did it right, slapped him when he didn’t. She could not help thinking of how one trained puppies.

She had worn a crystal pendant—a product of Wofford and Beale on New Eireann—and as she moved rhythmically above him, it swung to and fro, catching the light from the foyer. She murmured to him in a low monotone, at first using standard terms of endearment and pleasure, but after a time shifting to suggestions of sleepiness and fatigue. Are you tired? You can’t be tired already. You can hardly keep your eyes open…

Soon, aided by the physical release, Pulawayo lay in a drowsy, hypnotic state upon the cushions and silks that ’Cockers used for beds. Bridget ban softly dismounted, pulled a sling chair to the side of the bed, and set to work.

It did not take long to learn the pass codes and the location of the hard key to the STC database. Suspecting that the ’Cocker love of indolence meant a great deal of telefacing from home, she tried the keys and codes on Pulawayo’s home ’face, and was gratified to find her assumption justified.

She used the data-thread to download the information into her clothing. The database was rather large, and she could leave nothing but the “duckwing” outfit in active memory. That was chancy. One system crash, and she’d be wearing two gray towels around her waist and shoulders.

When she was finished, she erased all memories and logs from the ’face. She had been wearing fingercaps, so no genetic information was on the keyboard, and for any genetic traces found elsewhere, she had established a reason that any ’Cocker would readily accept.

A moan escaped from the bed area. Bridget ban frowned, because Pulawayo should not be coming out of the hypnosis on his own. She dashed across the courtyard, around the fishponds, and between two thick pillars carved to resemble tree trunks, coming to the mound of cushions and drapes on which the Director lay.

Pulawayo was still under, but his mouth opened and closed slackly and his throat, loose in sleep, struggled to form sounds. Talking in his sleep, she thought. He must be dreaming.

But the ’Cocker dialect was built of lazy lips and throats, and Bridget ban’s implant began to make sense out of the moans, helping her to hear them in Gaelactic.

“Where did you go?” the Director said. “Why did you leave me?”

Bridget ban had been leaning over the bed to hear better. Now she stood straight in alarm, thinking furiously. He couldn’t have come out of it. “I needed to use your facilities,” she temporized. “Go back to sleep now.”

“He is asleep. Why did you ask him about the access codes?”

Him? It was eerie enough to be conversing with a sleeping man. To hear him speak of himself in such a detached fashion reminded Bridget ban of old Die Bold tales of “spooken” that could take over your body. Each New Year’s Eve, with other Die Bold children, she would dress in terrible and frightening costumes, pretending to be already possessed and trusting to professional courtesy. The practice was taken less seriously than in Settlement Days, but the recollection came on her so suddenly and so completely that for a moment she almost ran in terror from the house. Only her iron control kept her at the bedside long enough to realize what must have happened.

“He was going to give me that information in the morning,” she said. “Hush. You sleep, too. That was quite a ride we had. You must be tired.”

“I’m not tired; but, oh, you were so good. And your clothing—that was a nice compliment. I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“No one’s going to hurt me.”

“They’ll be waiting outside, on the street to the maglev. He suggested it. He said the secret was worth the risk.”

“What secret?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll remember when he wakes up, I suppose.”

Of course. The paraperception. Awake, both halves of the brain would be cross-talking. Right now she was talking to Pulawayo’s emotive-perceptive half, but naturally they gave both hemi spheres access to the speech center.

Note to self: when interrogating a paraperceptic, be sure to hypnotize both halves.

Gently, she calmed the frightened half of the brain. Then, speaking into the right ear, she told the other half that he’d had a confused dream, and he would forget it when he awoke. She described their lovemaking as more passionate than it had been, and played to his fantasies by telling him she had worn her Hound’s uniform and they had played dominance games. She told him that she had left an hour before the current clock time. She told him they had kissed at the door.

There. The memories most easily recalled are the ones that we wish we’d had. If he remembered from his other half that she had left the bed during the night, he would ascribe that to her female needs.

Then, surrendering to an impulse, she pulled up the right eyelid.

The eyeball was rolled back in its socket, moving in a slow rhythm.

She pulled up the left eyelid.

And it was looking right at her.

“Good-bye,” she told the left ear. “You were wonderful. I shall never forget you.”

It was a small lie, and she needed the gratitude and cooperation of that half.

It was night and the street was shrouded in darkness broken by the pools of light created by the lamps. Most of the houses were dark blocks set into the night. A few, at this late hour, showed pale lamplight behind shades and curtains. A distant hiss marked the Hilliwaddy River where it spilled over the rocks in its descent from Polychrome Mountain. The wind stirred the trees into whispered excitement.

She had reached the corner and had turned onto Olumakali Street leading to the maglev station when she smelled them.

Two of them, waiting in the shadows between two of the houses. Under that tree.

(Is that her) she heard one whisper.

(She’s a tourista, in’t she?)

(But they said she’d be wearing some kinky sort of clothing. A “uniform.”)

She was passing by them now, pretending she couldn’t hear or smell them. She remembered the brawny ’Cockers she had noticed now and then. Peacock was ruled by custom, not laws. They didn’t have policers. They had enforcers.

She wondered if they knew what a Hound could do? There were only two of them.

Or were there?

She continued to listen as she drew away.

(That wasn’t her.)

(Wait. She’s passing under the streetlight. We’ll get a better look.)

(Red hair. That’s her alright. Call Kerinomata and tell them to come up the street. We’ll follow her down.)

They came out of the shadows with a silence remarkable for their size. She did not turn around to look at them. Four, she supposed. Two behind, two ahead. That made the odds not quite even. But she ought not simply kill them. She had come to Peacock Junction to track the phantom fleet, not to create a diplomatic incident between Peacock and the League. On the other hand, if she let them attack her, every Hound who heard of it would come straight to the Junction, and there would be no stone left atop another.

(Here comes Kerinomata. We got her…)

“Hey! Where’d she go!”

In the lightless interstice between two streetlamps, Bridget ban had leaped aside, leaving a pair of sandals standing in the walkway behind her—as if she had simply evaporated in place. Wooden soles would make noise when running and silence now was worth any price. Fleet as a whippet, she sprinted between two darkened dwellings into a shared greenery behind: trees, a fishpond, several beds of colorful flowers, a stone garden. As she ran, she gathered her srong up and tucked it into her waistband. Now, it was a short skirt, and her legs were free. She bounded over the pond, ran a few steps along a bench, and—up!—over a hedgerow of fat-leafed oily plants.

And down—in another back garden, again shared by several houses. She crouched, knees bent, fingertips lightly touching the grass like a runner poised for the gun, and listened. A whistle in the distance, on the block she had come from. Was this a world where people pulled the shutters closed when they heard such sounds at night? Or one where they ran to their windows and spied on the dark with comm units clutched in hand?

Long hours in the training room now returned interest a hundredfold. She sprinted out to the next street, where she paused, sniffed, listened, looked. Nothing. Across the street, and repeat the process over to the next street. Could she run fast enough to put herself outside the radius of what they would consider a reasonable search area? How far to the next maglev station?

No. Forget that. They’d be watching the maglev stations.

She paused, panted, looked around the neighborhood.

A large hulk of a building stood in midblock, like a rock among soap bubbles. The walls were rough, unfinished granite and bore in front a colonnade whose pillars seemed the least bit too wide and short. It appeared more lasting than the evanescent homes around it; more serious than anything the frivolous ’Cockers would build. Its stolid facade bespoke an earlier epoch in the planet’s history. If other buildings of this ilk had ever squatted along this street, they had long since been demolished and replaced.

An official building, then; dark, unlikely to be occupied at this hour. Perhaps it was a library, or a meeting hall. Was it open? Locked? Alarmed?

By now, her description was abroad. There would be someone waiting in her hotel room. Her ship would be guarded. (She hoped no one was so stupid as to try to break into it. The ship’s intelligence frowned on such mischief.) They would be expanding the search, block by block.

They had been fools to send only four men to arrest her. She could not count on them remaining fools. If they had woken Pulawayo by now—likely—he would tell them she had left his home an hour earlier, and that she was wearing her Hound’s uniform, as they had expected. This would confuse them for a time. Were they chasing the right person, or another redhead tourista coincidentally in the same neighborhood?

Either way, they would want to find her.

She found a back door to the building, where she could work unobserved in the dark. Her night vision was very good, at one with her enhanced smell and hearing. She studied the walls, saw no wires, no receptors. She paid particular attention to the mortared crevices between the great stone blocks. If she were to insert a monitor into the walls, there would be a good location…

Nothing.

Remembering the vestibule at the STC tower, she leaped to no conclusion, remained crouched there, pawed a little at the door, snuffled. It was hinged to open inward. A lever latch. She pressed it down.

No alarms. This far from the tourist areas, the ’Cockers did not fear unauthorized entries. Among themselves, custom was a stronger bar than locks and alarms. Those who found trespass unimaginable would find it hard to imagine trespassers. Briefly, she wondered what it might be like to live in a society that did not bar its doors.

Her implant returned the datum that buildings of this style were called remonstratoria, or Halls of Remonstration. They were thought to be either law courts or temples, but no off-worlder had ever been inside one, and what rites were performed within remained a mystery.

Wonderful. She could add sacrilege to her list of offenses.

The door swung noiselessly inward, revealing a darkened corridor. She stepped through, closing the door softly, and found herself in a rough basement. She squatted there, panting from her run, and sniffed. A harsh chemical odor stung her nostrils. It might mask the odor of a human being—a custodian or night watchman.

But listening, she heard nothing save the creaking and settling of the building itself. This was an old building. She could smell the age in the dank stone, in the seasoned wood. The years had soaked into them and settled there.

Old buildings are sacred in societies ruled by custom.

Sacred because it was old or old because it was sacred, it made no difference. But how could she enter such a building and not explore? Hounds are, by their nature, always sniffing around.

She picked out a flight of old wooden steps twisting up a narrow stairwell. The runners had rounded dips in their centers, worn by countless feet over countless years. She thought the building might pre-date the Reconnection, when some of the Diaspora worlds had recovered the ability to slide between the stars.

Stairs are meant for climbing; and so, she did.

She paused again on the main floor to sniff and listen. The chemical scents were stronger here, but the silences remained as profound. Light glimmered through shutter slats covering the windows. A tree must have stood between the window and the streetlamp because the light flickered irregularly as the branches outside wavered in the fitful night breeze.

She made out row after row of racks reaching nearly to the ceiling and arranged in rigid precision from the front of the room to its back. The severity of the geometry was at one with the architecture of the building—and very unlike the free-flowing, unwalled improvisations of modern ’Cockers.

A library, she thought, or possibly an art gallery.

Drawing nearer, she discerned solid objects mounted to the walls. Sculpture, perhaps? If so, sculpture of little variety. Equally spaced in rigid rows, each seemed roughly the same size as all the others. Well, sonnets were all the same “size,” yet each could be an exquisitely different work of art—for the greatest art, Die Bolders believed, lay in “achievement within restrictions,” just as accomplishment in sport required hurdles and nets and balk lines.

Brief bursts of dim light alternated with closeted darkness as the leaves fluttered in front of the window. Bridget ban stepped into an aisle to get a better look at one of the sculptures.

And came face-to-face with a wide-eyed, grim-lipped elf with wild, frizzy hair. It required all her Hound’s training to stifle the cry that climbed up her throat.

Discovered! There had been a watchman, after all.

But the elf said nothing. The eyes did not blink. The mouth did not part. A disembodied voice spoke through sewn-still lips. “I am Billy Kisilwando. I killed my partner in a drunken fit…”

And the horror of discovery gave way to the discovery of horror.

It was a head, carefully preserved by the taxidermist’s art, eyes replaced by glass, lips stitched closed, mounted to a wall bracket. Beneath was a plaque bearing a name, an offense, and a date. Evidently, if someone stood for a time before a particular head, an intelligence would play that person’s last words.

When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days grace to set his affairs in order and to meditate, which he did. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s manu. Then they cut off his head, preserved it, and mounted it in the Hall of Remonstration, where it is admired by all who pass through the Nolapatady District on their journeys. And forever after he repeated his confession to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom: not that a man be given the grace to contemplate his end; but that he feels bound to honor its expiration.

Bridget ban contemplated the head of Billy Kisilwando, and passed judgment.

“Now, that’s different,” she said aloud.

She wandered fascinated through the hall, and found aisle after aisle of stuffed and mounted heads. The panels near the street entrance were newer; those near the back or in side chambers were older, more severe in their lines, with classical moldboards and trim. The older plaques bore dates in the former “Peacock’s Era.” The newer plaques bore Gaelactic dates, but with the Year of the Peacock noted parenthetically underneath.

There were fewer elves in the back rooms, and in one especially dusty room, the only heads were identifiably men and women. These older displays were crowded closer together, and the heads were tattered and moth-eaten. As the displays grew more recent, the heads converged toward the androgynous average.

On the newer walls, brightly painted in the exuberant pastels of modern Peacock, were mounted among the elves the heads of others: pale, flat-faced Jugurthans; golden women from Valency; thin-featured Alabastrines with skin like night; even a Cynthian warrior’s head, dripping with jewels, cruel arrogance, and barbaric splendor—and hard must have been the severing of that neck. The off-worlder faces all bore a look of immense surprise; as if they could not credit what was being done to them; all except the Cynthian, who managed somehow to sneer even in death. Curious, she waited until it spoke its confession.

Eat my dick, the head whispered, and an involuntary smile caught at the ends of Bridget ban’s lips. One thing you had to grant the barbarians of the Hadramoo: they died in style.

A Hound can construct marvels out of odds and ends, and in the remonstratorium she found all she needed. The preparation rooms downstairs contained a dye with which she darkened her entire body from gold to brown, save on the palms and soles. She had known Megranomers who styled their bodies so. A knife in the same room cut off the longest part of her hair, and a thong bundled the rest of it atop her head. A bit of charcoal from the machine shop added lines to her face and aged her appearance in subtle ways, and two small coins found in a drawer and pressed into her nostrils altered the shape of her nose.

Finally, she wound her srong about her waist. It was possible that the enforcers had gotten a picture of her clothing. But she had been in the dark between two lamps when she slid away, and they had been sauntering complacently behind, thinking themselves clever and undetected. At best they might recall the srong having “many iridescent colors,” which would narrow the sartorial odds not at all. She dared not try to alter the pattern, because she had purged the cache and most of the memory in the fabric was now taken up by the STC database. She contented herself with turning the fabric the other way out, which reversed the pattern and presented a slightly more muted version.

Ponchos, however, were not native to this world and they would notice hers immediately. She could not discard it, since part of the copied database resided in its mems; but she did manage to tighten the neck hole into a headband—the old-fashioned way: there was needle and thread in the prep rooms—and she wrapped the whole thing above her head in a fair imitation of a Chettinad turban. This served the double purpose of concealing the remnant of her red hair.

She still looked like an outworlder, but she might be an older Chettinad or a Megranomer or at any rate not the fleet young golden Hound who had fled from them the night before. “Ah aim abutt mahyõ bizz,” she said aloud, practicing a Megranomic accent from the Eastern Isles. Best not lay it on too thick. The idea was to be unnoticed.

Finally, it could not be good for any outworlder to be found too near the remonstratorium. So, as the eastern sky grayed just a little, she worked her way through still, silent gardens toward the maglev line. There, she found a copse in a public park and concealed herself. Outdoors, the waning night was chilly and she wrapped her arms about herself, wishing she hadn’t had to disguise the poncho.

In the morning, as people began to gather at the Uasladonto Street maglev station for the ride into town, Bridget ban spotted a mixed trio of touristas. She slid from concealment and crossed the walkway so as to come smoothly into line with them. As she expected, they were delighted to find “another real woman,” the man in the group being especially appreciative. He was from High Tara itself, and sported checkered kilts, a fringed cloak, and an admiring glance. The Jugurthan woman with him was robust of physique and carried an umbrella matching the pattern of her srong. She introduced a Valencian woman she had met in a nearby restaurant.

And so, in this chatty company, to all appearances boon traveling companions, Bridget ban sauntered past the weary enforcer standing by the entry with a digital image in his hand and the upcoming shift change on his mind. He was looking for a younger, more athletic woman, traveling alone.

Entry to her ship was simple. She contacted the intelligence over her implant and the guards that had been placed about the ship were knocked out by a sonic burst from the ship’s defenses. She then slipped aboard, locked up, and let them wake up naturally. Later, she would call the hotel and have her belongings shuttled over, tell them she had spent the night aboard “on Hound’s business.” If the events of last night were brought up, she would profess ignorance. Yes, she had been wearing her “undress greens,” because Pulawayo had seemed much taken with her uniform. Yes, she had left Nolapatady at such and such an hour: they could ask Pulawayo. With only a little luck, they would feel so foolish at chasing some other red-haired tourista through the streets of Nolapatady that they would not press matters further. That would only attract the interest of the League and, more dreadfully, of the other Hounds. There would be no trace of her download of the STC database, and the Director would corroborate all the important details.

They might wonder what had happened to the other redhead, but everyone would pretend to believe a story that held together so wonderfully.

In the meantime, the data in her anycloth had better hold a damned good secret to make the whole effort worthwhile. What reason could Peacock have for protecting the phantom fleet that they would risk attacking a Hound?

She pulled off her srong and turban and linked them into her shipboard ’face, gave the intelligence the local dates for the ambush of the Cynthians, and asked it to track the ambushing fleet forward and backward. Then she showered and restored her appearance, produced a fall to complete her hair. When she returned to the ’face, the analysis was finished.

She studied the results. Then she asked for similar traces on all traffic, deleting first local in-system traffic, then traffic on the Silk Road and Route 66. Finally, she highlighted the points of origin and termination.

The results made her whistle.

The sky was full of holes.