“Ah,” said Caspor, turning back to the map. “Seven. Seven directions. Now, how would that work out in pairs? Divided into our customary three hundred sixty degrees would be fifty-one-point-four-two-eight-five-seven-one and so on, more or less forever.”
He punched keys on the map control and spun Tercis toward the top, another key and a line down from Tercis, slightly to the left. “Margaret came from Tercis to Fajnard,” Caspor said. Another line, upward to the right, “Margaret and Mar-agern came from Fajnard to Thairy. If I come away from Tercis at the same angle…” One more line off at a weird angle. Caspor fiddled with the controls, spinning the line into a cone. “It ends up in the nowhere,” he said.
“Let me try it,” said Falija. She went to the map and stared at it for a moment before entering the next line. “I seem to recall that from there…” The line bounced back from nothingness and hit a star. “Chottem. Where my people are!”
“That’s a colony world,” said Margaret. “Where from there?”
“From Chottem…Cantardene.”
“There’s no colony on Cantardene! That’s a Mercan world.”
“We have people on Cantardene,” said Naumi. “Bondspeople. The Margaret there may be a bondsperson.”
“We have an import-export office on Cantardene,” said Jaker. “That is, Poul-Jaker Import-Export does. There’s a freeport area, Crossroads of the World, they call it. The bondservant market is there, and so is all the gossip twenty races can spread around. By wormhole, it’s only a couple of days from here.”
“We can send someone,” said Poul. “That salesman of yours, Jaker! We could get him on the next ship out. You know who I mean, the one who seems to be able to talk anyone into anything, what’s his name?”
“Stipps,” said Jaker, grinning. “Stipps the Lips.”
“I’ve met him,” said Ferni. “On B’yurngrad somewhere. Do you have an export arm there?”
“We have an export arm everywhere,” replied Jaker.
“Aha!” said Caspor as he spun the lines from Thairy and Cantardene. “They don’t intersect anywhere. They come close at B’yurngrad. No, they don’t. Yes, they do…didn’t…”
“What?” blurted Naumi.
“I mean, let me play with it a while. I need to update the galactic shift…”
We turned our eyes away from the chart, unable to keep them away for long. Ferni said, “Flek, will you help me?”
“Ferni, I’ll do everything possible. I’ll see what knives we have in stock…”
“Can you lend us the prototype?” asked Naumi.
“If we can think of a good way to use it, sure. We can disassemble it so you can carry it. Jaker, you’d be welcome to go with me.”
Jaker shook her head. “I’d just be in the way, Flek. I think Poul and I’d be more useful getting one or several spies into Cantardene and seeing if we can find the other person we’re looking for. The K’Famir are among the universe’s most despicable creatures; but they do business, and when creatures do business, they have to make deals, and you can’t make a deal without betraying something of your nature. We’re accustomed to snooping around to ascertain what people will buy or sell.
“I saw Stipps this morning, here on Thairy. He’s one of those cocksure, egocentric people you love to hate, a very youthful arrogance for a person that age—and with only one eye, at that—but at least ninety percent of his opinion about himself usually pans out…”
“One eye?” asked Naumi. “How old?”
“Oh, middle years or more, and yes, one eye. Some kind of accident in his youth, he says. Why?”
“No reason, except that I knew, know someone like that, though I haven’t seen him in years.”
Jaker gave him a questioning look, but when he said nothing else, she continued. “If no one has any objections, we can get Stipps on the ship tonight, though…the task is a bit vague. Who are we looking for?”
“For me,” said Mar-agern and I, as with one voice. “It would have to be a bondslave who looks very much like us,” I continued. “Could be older or younger…”
“Younger,” said Falija. “Somewhere around Naumi’s age because they split off at the same time, and Cantardene isn’t that far from Thairy.”
I nodded. “She’ll speak several of the local languages. Can’t be too many women like that among slaves.”
“What other skills will she have?”
Mar-agern and I looked at one another. “If she was only twelve?” I said at last, shaking my head.
Mar-agern said, “She would probably sew quite well. I did.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “She would sew well.”
“Aha!” shouted Caspor. “Yes! Ferni, until this very moment that link didn’t go to B’yurngrad! It’s a new link.”
“What?” “What do you mean,” cried several voices.
“I mean, if we start on Tercis, it goes from Tercis to Fajnard, from Fajnard to Thairy, from Thairy to B’yurngrad, from B’yurngrad to Cantardene, from Cantardene to Chottem, from Chottem to that point out in nowhere…”
“I know what’s there,” said Falija. “My people found it ages ago.”
“…and from nowhere back to Tercis. One way. The whole way. Seven roads is one road, but it’s only been one road since the last automatic update on galactic shift! B’yurngrad wasn’t in position until very, very recently.”
“How long does it stay in position?” I asked.
Caspor turned back to the map, whispering to himself, “There has to be some stretchiness in the connection, something that holds on for a while…”
Falija said into the silence, “This means the configuration is not a permanent one. We know some parts of it have been in use for some time. The one from Tercis to Fajnard and Fajnard to Thairy, for instance. Howkel knew where those roads ended up, so people came and went through them. Other points have come into contact more recently. And this last link…has only very temporarily completed the one road.”
Caspor had been playing with the star guide, rotating the strangely angled image. Now it bloomed on the screen as a seven-pointed star. “From this point of view, it’s a septagram, but all the end points are in motion. I postulate that once the connection is made, there’s enough stretchiness to keep
