myself a vacation.”
“Are you sure your friend—Antoan, was it—was really sick?” Heikki asked. There was a vague picture forming in her mind, the details fuzzy, but the outline unpleasantly clear.
“Yes,” Sebasten-Januarias began, but broke off. “I didn’t check. Why should I?”
Heikki didn’t bother answering, staring instead at the menu displayed beneath the table top. It was too early to be drinking, but a part of her wanted a glass of the harsh local whiskey, and the false calm it would bring.
“Antoan’s one of us,” Sebasten-Januarias said, a little too emphatically. “He wouldn’t set me up.”
“Maybe not intentionally,” Heikki said, her mind elsewhere, and Sebasten-Januarias swore softly.
“How couldn’t he intend it?”
Heikki looked up, belatedly remembering her responsibilities, and said, “He wouldn’t’ve been told why—if he did fake being sick, that is—just offered money to do it. If I were setting it up, I’d say something like I wanted to see what kind of a pilot you are, without letting you know I was interested in hiring. That would work.”
The younger man nodded grudgingly, somewhat appeased. “I guess it could happen that way.”
“More important,” Heikki said, “is what you do now.”
“I somehow didn’t think this was the end of it,” Sebasten-Januarias muttered. “I was thinking I’d hole up with my cousins, out toward Retego Bay—”
“How were you planning on getting there?” Heikki asked.
The pilot shrugged, and swore, clutching his ribs with his good hand. “Fly myself, or hitchhike. All right, it wasn’t that great an idea, but you know what Lowlands is like. Nothing’s a secret here.”
That had been true twenty years ago, Heikki thought, and some things didn’t change. The Firster community was a small one, and despite its ideology was intricately intertwined with the corporate world. People talked— you didn’t keep secrets from kin, after all—and inevitably Lo-Moth heard. It took time for information to make its way through the crooked channels, perhaps even enough time. “Be careful, Jan,” she said aloud, wishing there was more she could do. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.” Sebasten-Januarias hesitated. “Look, there’s something else you need to know, about Alexieva. First, I don’t like her. I’m saying that up front so you won’t accuse me of being prejudiced. She’s hard to get along with, and I don’t like her. But she’s also very close to Lo-Moth, too close for an independent, and she gets a lot of jobs from them that maybe she oughtn’t on balance to get.”
“We were told she was the best,” Heikki said.
“She may be,” Sebasten-Januarias retorted, “but she’s also expensive, and Lo-Moth doesn’t like paying top money for anything. Not on their own planet, anyway.”
That was true enough. Heikki made a disgusted face, and looked away. I knew there was something wrong when Alexieva agreed to that contract, she thought. I knew it, and I didn’t have the sense to investigate. Damn, I should’ve listened to my instincts and not hired her in the first place. She can’t be the only surveyor on Iadara.
“She may be the only good surveyor on Iadara,” she began, and Sebasten-Januarias cut in.
“That’s just it, she isn’t. There’s Axt, and Karast, and Charlie Peng, for that matter, all just as good. Oh, she’s an incomer, and that helps—not being Firster, I mean. But she always gets the recommendations and then the big jobs from Lo-Moth.” He broke off, grimacing. “All right, maybe I’m not being fair. She is good, and there’s no reason the company shouldn’t recommend her. But she’s just too damn close to them, that’s all.”
“Ciceron gave me one name,” Heikki said, then shook herself. “Damn, I should’ve thought. Well, that explains how a weatherman got to be the Guild rep here. Lo-Moth must’ve put him in place, to look after their interests.” It made sense when she thought about it, too much sense for her to have overlooked it in the first place. Of course off-worlder contract labor would prefer to go to their own guilds to find local help, and, equally, Lo-Moth would want to be sure their temporary employees hired only reliable locals. “Christ, I’ve been stupid.” Poor Jock, she thought remotely. He wont be happy to find out his latest playmate’s a corporate hack.
“I appreciate this,” she said aloud. “Look, is there anything—?”
Sebasten-Januarias grinned. “Don’t worry about me, Heikki. I can manage.”
“I hope so,” Heikki said, and pushed herself up from the table. In the doorway, she looked back, but Sebasten-Januarias was already gone.
By the time she returned to the suite, Djuro was there ahead of her, sitting with arms folded in front of the message cube. He looked up as she came in, his light eyes angry.
“What the hell was that all about?”
Heikki waved away the question. “Later,” she said, and touched the button that would erase the message she had left. “Did you pick up any news?”
“Later, hell,” Djuro began, and Heikki sighed.
“Let it go for a minute, Sten,” she said. “What did you hear?”
The little man grimaced, and ran a hand over his bald head. “A lot of nothing. The Firsters are mad as hell, but no one seems to have any idea of what really happened. I think I must’ve heard half a dozen different stories —I don’t suppose you know what’s going on?”
Heikki gave a twisted smile. “I might.” Quickly, she outlined Sebasten-Januarias’s story, not adding her own suspicions. When she had finished, Djuro sighed again, looking up at her from under down-drawn eyebrows. “You didn’t hear all that from this—Ser Slade?” “No,” Heikki agreed. For an instant, she toyed with the idea of not saying anything more, but common sense prevailed. “I spoke to Jan, at a bar in FirstTown—that’s what the message I left you was all about. He told me what had happened.”
Djuro muttered something through clenched teeth, but not loudly enough to force her to take notice. Instead, she fished her lens out of her belt. The chronometric display showed almost noon, and she went over to the little kitchen to mix herself a stiff drink.
The message cube lit a little before the fourteenth hour, and Djuro sprang to respond, data lens in his hand as he bent over the little display. Heikki waited until he straightened before saying, “Well?”
“I asked the tower to call me when Jock landed,” Djuro answered. “He’s down and safe, and taking a jitney here.”
“A jitney?” Heikki frowned. “Is that wise, under the circumstances?”
Djuro shrugged. “It would take a lot of reprogramming, not to mention leaving tracks everywhere, to subvert a commercial jitney.”
Nkosi arrived not long after, rumpled and cheerful and smelling faintly of sea salts. Alexieva, at his heels, looked far less cheerful, and more rumpled. Heikki, who was all too well aware of the pilot’s apparently inexhaustible energy and equally insatiable curiosity, could almost find it in her heart to feel sorry for the other woman.
“So, what is all this about?” Nkosi unwound himself from his voluminous coat—a Firster coat, Heikki saw without surprise; Nkosi always managed to adopt something from each world he visited—and tossed it onto the nearest chair. “Do you really think this has to do with us, and with our job?”
“Yes,” Heikki said shortly, not wanting to go into the details just at the moment.
“Then there is a double reason for doing what I wanted,” Nkosi said, and glanced back over his shoulder at Alexieva. “We are travelling by freighter, are we not?” Heikki nodded reluctantly, already seeing where this would lead, and Nkosi continued, “Then there should be no difficulty arranging for Alex to share my cabin. Any extra fees I will pay, of course.”
Alexieva made a noise that might have been protest, but Heikki spoke more quickly. “Hold it, Jock. You’re telling me you want to bring Alexieva with you? Why?”
Nkosi frowned. “I should think that would be evident, especially now—”
“Did you plan to ask her before you found out about Jan?” Heikki went on.
Nkosi’s frown was deeper now, but he kept his temper well in check. “As a matter of fact, yes. I had hoped to ask her, that she would accept—and what business is it of yours, Heikki?”
There was a warning in his tone, and in Alexieva’s glare, but Heikki continued in spite of it. “Are you sure it was your idea, Jock?”
“What the hell are you getting at?” Nkosi’s voice was deceptively soft, and very dangerous.
Heikki took a deep breath, controlling her own anger. “Look, Jock, I’m sorry, but I’ve got every reason to think that your friend here is a whole lot closer to Lo-Moth than she let us believe, and I’m not real happy about it. And I’m not real eager to take her back to the Loop with us.”
