they wouldn’t still be around.”
“I’ll be a good citizen.” As long as I’m treated nice. He was already halfway to the concourse gate. He chinned up a small window from Blueshell’s camera. All this high-bandwidth comm was courtesy of the local net. Strange that Rihndell was still providing the service. Blueshell seemed to be negotiating still. Maybe there wasn’t a scam… or anyway, not one that Saint Rihndell was in on.
“Pham, I’ve lost the video from Greenstalk, just as she went into some kind of tunnel. Her location beacon is still clear.”
The concourse gate made an opening for him, and then Pham was in the crowded, market volume. He heard the raucous hubbub even through his armor. He moved slowly, sticking to the most uncrowded paths, following guide ropes that threaded the space. The mob was no problem. Everyone made way, some with almost panicky haste. Pham didn’t know whether it was his razor spines or the trace of chlorine his suit “leaked'. Maybe that last touch was a bit much. But the whole point was to look nonhuman. He slowed even more, doing his best not to nick anyone. Something awfully like a target-designation laser flickered in his rear window. He ducked quickly around an aquarium as Ravna said, “The terrane just complained to your suit: ‘You are in violation of dress-code’ is how the translation comes out.”
Is it my chlorine B.O., or have they detected the guns? “What about outside? Any Butterflies in sight?”
“No. Ship activity hasn’t changed much during the last five hours. No Aprahanti movement or change in comm status.” Long pause. Indirectly from the OOB bridge he could hear Blueshell talking with Ravna, the words indistinct but excited. He jabbed around, trying to find the direct connection. Then Ravna was talking to him again. “Hei! Blueshell says Rihndell has accepted the shipment! He’s onloading the agrav fabric right now. And OOB just got a commit on the repairs!” So they were ready to fly -except that three of them were still ashore, and one of them was missing.
Pham floated over the top of the aquarium and finally caught direct sight of Blueshell. He tweaked the suit’s gas jets very carefully and settled down beside the Rider.
His arrival was about as welcome as finger-mites at a picnic. The scrimshawed one had been chattering away, tapping his articulated artwork on the wall as his helper translated into Trisk. Now the creature drew in his tusks, and the neck arms folded themselves. The others followed suit. All of them sidled up the wall, away from Blueshell and Pham. “Our business is now complete. We don’t know where your friend has gone,” said the Trisk interpreter.
Blueshell’s fronds extended after them, wavering. “B-but just a little guidance is all we need. Who—” It was no use. Saint Rihndell and his merry crew kept going. Blueshell rattled in abrupt frustration. His fronds angled slightly, turning all attention on Pham Nuwen. “Sir Pham, I am doubting now your expertise as a trader. Saint Rihndell might have helped.”
“Maybe.” Pham watched the tusk-legs disappear into the crowd, pulling the trellises behind them like a big black balloon. Ugh. Maybe Rihndell was simply an honest trader. “What are the chances that Greenstalk would abandon you in the middle of something like that?”
Blueshell dithered for a moment. “In an ordinary trade stop, she might have noticed some extraordinary profit opportunity. But here, I—”
Ravna’s voice interrupted sympathetically, “Maybe she just, uh, forgot the context?”
“No,” Blueshell was definite. “The skrode would never permit such a failure, not in the middle of a hard trade.”
Pham shifted windows around inside his helmet, looking in all directions. The crowd was still keeping an open space around them. There was no evidence of cops. Would I know them if I saw them? “Okay,” said Pham. “We have a problem, whether I’d come out or not. I suggest we take a little walk, see if we can find where Greenstalk went.”
Rattle. “We have little choice now. My lady Ravna, do please try to reach the tusk-legs interpreter. Perhaps he can link us to the local Skroderiders.” He came off the wall, rotated on gas jets. “Come along, Sir Pham.”
Blueshell led the way across the concourse, vaguely in the direction Greenstalk had gone. Their path was anything but straight, more a drunkard’s walk that once took them almost back to their starting place. “Delicately, delicately,” the Skroderider responded when Pham complained about the pace. The Rider never insisted on passage through clots of critters. If they did not respond to the gentle waving of his fronds, he detoured all around them. And he kept Pham directly behind him so the intimidation factor of the razored armor was of no use. “These people may look very peaceable to you, Sir Pham, easy to push around. But note, this is among themselves. These races have had thousands of years to accommodate to one another, to achieve local commensality. To outsiders they will necessarily be less tolerant, else they would have been overrun long ago.” Pham remembered the “dress-code” warning and decided not to argue.
The next twenty minutes would have been the experience of a lifetime for a Qeng Ho trader, to be within arm’s reach of a dozen different intelligent species. But when they finally reached the far wall, Pham was grinding his teeth. Twice more he received a dress-code warning. The only bright spot: Saint Rihndell was still extending the courtesy of local net support, and Ravna had more information: “The local Skroderider colony is about a hundred kilometers from the concourse. There’s some kind of transport station beyond the wall you’re at.”
And the tunnel Greenstalk had entered was just ahead of them. From this angle, they could see the dark of space beyond it. For the first time, there was no problem with crowds; scarcely anyone was entering or leaving the hole.
Laser light twinkled on his rear windows. “Dress code violation. Fourth warning. It says to ‘please leave the volume at once’.”
“We’re going. We’re going.”
Darkness, and Pham boosted the gain on his helmet windows. At first he thought the “transport station” was open to space, that the locals had restraint fields as in the high beyond. then he noticed the pillars merged into transparent walls. they were still indoors in the old-fashioned way, but the view… they were on the starward side of the arc. the ring particles were like dark fish floating silently a few tens of meters out from him. In the further distance, structures stuck out of the ring plane far enough to get sundazzle. But the brightest object was almost overhead: the blue of ocean, the white of cloud. Its soft light flooded the ground around him. However far the Qeng Ho fared, such a sight had been welcome. Yet this was not quite the real thing. The was only approximately spherical, and its face was bisected by the ring shadow. It was a small object, not more than a few hundred klicks above him, one of the shepherd satellites they had seen on the way in. The shepherd’s haze of atmosphere was crisply bounded by the sides of a vast canopy.
He dragged his attention down from the view. “Ten to one that’s the Skroderiders’ terrane.”
“Of course,” Blueshell replied. “It’s typical. The surf in such minigravity can never be what I prefer, but —”
“Dear Blueshell! Sir Pham! Over here.” It was Greenstalk’s voice. According to Pham’s suit, it was a local connection, not relayed through the OOB.
Blueshell’s fronds angled in all directions. “Are you all right, Greenstalk?” They rattled back and forth at each other for a few seconds. Then Greenstalk resumed in Trisk: “Sir Pham. Yes, I’m all right. I’m sorry to upset you all so much. But I could tell the deal with Rihndell was going to work out, and then these local Riders stopped by. They are wonderful people, Sir Pham. They have invited us across to their terrane. Just for a day or so. It will be a wonderful rest before we go on our way. And I think they may be able to help us.”
Like the quest romances he’d found in Ravna’s bedtime library: the weary travelers, partway to their goal, find a friendly haven and some special gift. Pham switched to a private line to Blueshell: “Is that really Greenstalk? Is she under duress?”
“It’s her, and free, Sir Pham. You heard us speaking. I’ve been with her two hundred years. No one’s twisting her fronds.”
“Then why the hell did she skip out on us?” Pham surprised himself, almost hissing the words.
Long pause. “That is strange. My guess: these local Riders somehow know something very important to us. Come, Sir Pham. But carefully.” He rolled away in what seemed a random direction.
“Rav, what do you—” Pham noticed the red light blinking on his comm status panel, and his irritation chilled. How long had the link to Ravna been down?
Pham followed Blueshell, floating low behind the other, using his gas jets to pace the Skroderider. This entire
