"Alternatives?" Val Con asked, which she might've known he would. She sighed and shook her head.
"I can't even think of a good argument to support us going in together, instead of splitting up," she said. "Must be getting old."
He smiled. "We are decided, then." He looked at her, green eyes serious. "I will be very careful, cha'trez."
"You always say that," she complained, and sat up, wary of tangling her hair in the near branches. "Guess we better move on it, then."
"Indeed. The best path to finish is through begun."
He came to his knees, fishing in his vest for the stuff he had taken off the dead Agent. Most of it, he handed to her, reserving for himself the ship key, a metal card that was the late Beldyn's piloting license, and a flatish, notched piece of long metal.
"Interior key," he murmured. "For unlocking chests and inner hatches in times of disrupted power."
"Right," she said, and pocketed the jumble as Val Con ghosted out from under their bush and moved toward the Agents' ship.
THE HATCH ROSE in response to the key's command, and Val Con entered the ship of the Department.
The cabin lights came up as he proceeded, alert for traps and trip-beams. He achieved the center of the piloting chamber without mishap, and paused there to look about himself.
The board was locked down, screens blanked; the status lights showed all systems at first level standby—primed to leap into complete wakefulness at the touch of a pilot's hand. A prudent measure, Val Con thought, for a pilot who had chosen not to land at a port, where he might command the luxury of a hotpad, and who could not know if he would depart hotly pursued by enemies, or at leisure and in his own good time.
Well. Quick and silent, he went through the rest of the ship, satisfying himself that he was alone, then returned to the piloting chamber, pulling Beldyn chel'Mara's piloting license out of his pocket.
MIRI SHIFTED under the bush, her eyes on the ship. The hatch had come up without any fireworks going off and Val Con had walked on in. Inside her head, she saw the particular pattern that meant he was being careful, and thinking in small, tight steps. There was no sense that he saw anything that struck him as odd, or dangerous, or—
Silhouetted against the wooded hill, the ship's hatch descended, inevitably and with dignity. Miri flung herself to her feet, heedless of the scratches inflicted by her passage through the bush, her shout swallowed by the accelerating whine of engaged gyros.
The Agents' ship hurtled into the sky.
HIS HANDS flashed across the board, calling for an abort. The ship ignored him.
He slapped up navcomp, which obligingly displayed the laid-in and locked course, the coords of which were all too familiar.
The Department's ship was taking him to Headquarters.
Val Con bit his lip, letting the force of the ship's rising press him into the pilot's chair. His hands on the board—the very keys had recognized his fingerprints, he thought, and gave a wry mental bow to the Commander, who was, after all, no fool.
The ship hurtled upward. Maincomp allowed him to activate the screens, so that he could see the ground falling away beneath him, the bush where he had left Miri already indistinguishable in the blur of green.
Headquarters, he thought, and then thought of the Commander, and of the likely fate of one who had broken training, to the several-times loss of the Department.
Returning to Headquarters was not an option.
Val Con reached to the board and opened a comm line.
A CHIME SOUNDED. Priscilla, more than half of her attention on the systems report cluttering her main screen, reached absently across the board to hit the toggle.
"Mendoza."
"Priscilla, this is Val Con." His voice came out of the speaker, calm and clear, immediately recognizable, though she had not heard it for more than three Standards. She sat up, staring.
"Already?" She demanded. "Shan said it would be days yet—"
"Shan was mistaken," he interrupted. "Attend me now. There is a ship rising from Lytaxin at longitude 76.51.33 west, 39.24.17 north, at an acceleration of 7.8 local gravities. Acquire it, please."
Her fingers danced over the board. "I have it."
"Good. Destroy it."
She blinked; checked her instruments. "Val Con, you're on that ship."
"Indeed I am. Fire at will."
"No."
"Priscilla, if you refuse, you will destroy the clan. The ship will not obey me and the course laid in will deliver me into the hands of our enemy." Calm, so calm, his voice. It was his very calmness that convinced her that his order was right and necessary, though, Goddess, what she would say to Shan . . .
"It would be best," he said. "If you fire while we are in atmosphere."
She smiled. "Yes, of course it would." Her fingers moved on the board again, unhesitant and certain. "Beam up," she murmured. "Target locked."
MIRI CRANED up into the brightening sky, watching the ship that was taking him away from her. It was at the edge of her vision, now, a speck against the white clouds of morning. Soon—
Slashing through the white clouds came a slender radiant beam. It touched the speck, surrounded it, pulsed.
The ship blew up.
Miri screamed.
REN ZEL WOKE, suddenly and entirely.
A glance across the dark room at the glowing ice-blue digits of the clock proved that he had been asleep just over an hour. Despite this, he felt extraordinarily alert, even a bit restless. A walk, he thought, would be just the thing to put him restful once more.
So thinking, he arose from his bed and dressed rapidly in the near darkness. Stamping into his boots, he reached out and plucked his pilot's jacket from its hook. His fingers caressed the worn, scarred leather, running over the tiny seams that each marked a place where the leather had been torn and, later, mended.
He smiled, there in the darkness, and swung the jacket up and on. The next instant, he stepped into the hallway beyond his door and strode off toward the right.
The hall bent sharply to the left, then to the right. Ren Zel moved out with a will, senses wide open, more energetic with every step.
The hall bent again to the right. He rounded the corner and walked into a garden, stepping from carpet to grass and pausing at last, his face turned up to a sky silvered with starlight. He took a deep breath of fragrant air—and felt something bump against his shin.
Carefully, he looked down, his vision tainted with silver, so that the large gray cat making a second, even more robust, pass at his leg seemed for a moment to be outlined in light.
"Gently," Ren Zel murmured, bending down to offer a forefinger in greeting. "That leg has already been broken once—and very thoroughly, too."
The cat blinked up at him and touched its nose, dainty, and slightly damp, to the offered finger. The demands of courtesy having thus been satisfied, it pushed its head hard against Ren Zel's hand, startling the man into a soft laugh, as he obligingly rubbed the sturdy gray ears.
A small wind moved among the leafy things, bearing sweet, unaccustomed scents. Ren Zel drew another deep breath, and straightened with a final chuck of the cat's chin.
"Come now, let me walk through this garden. I have been—long away—from gardens."
He strolled forward, boots whispering across the grass, smiling as his sleeve brushed the leaf of a misty night bloomer and released a scent as sharp and as satisfying as cinnamon. Precisely such a small treasure might have been found in the garden maintained by the House into which he had been born, years and worlds away.
Directly ahead, the grassy route he followed dead ended in a opulent sweep of greenery, but before one reached that, one came across the roots, and then the trunk, of a monumental tree.
Ren Zel picked his way across the surface roots. Glancing down to be certain of his footing, he saw that the cat companioned him still, gliding silently over the irregular ground.
Arriving at the tree itself, Ren Zel steadied himself with one hand flat against remarkably warm wood, and craned upward.
Above him, he saw shadow, sketching, perhaps, the shapes of leaf and branch. The stars were quite obscured, and the brilliant, silvery sky. He squinted into the vastness of the shadow in vain; details eluded him, though he gained a vivid impression of strength, of . . . age . . . and . . . warm regard.
From the high branches came a sound, as of something come loose and falling swiftly groundward. Pilot reactions flung Ren Zel back half a dozen paces, which was well, else the small plummeting object would have struck him squarely on the head.
Instead, it smacked in to the dark grass and was immediately leapt upon by the cat, who planted both white front feet firmly on its prize and looked up at Ren Zel with unmistakable challenge, as if to say,
Well? I've caught it for you, Master Timid. Are you too fainthearted even to look at what it is?
Ren Zel stepped forward and bent down, not without a certain amount of wariness, recalling the antics of tree-toads in the garden of his youth. The cat stepped back, tail high, and flicked out a negligent paw, moving the object sufficiently for his eye to find it.
No tree-toad here. Frowning slightly, Ren Zel bent and picked up what proved to be a seedpod—
two
seedpods, connected by a thin branchlet. He looked at the cat, sitting primly, tail around toes, its gaze very much on Ren Zel's face.
"Your tree is throwing things at me, eh? Am I to infer that I am unwelcome?"
One quicksilver paw came out, passing lightly over the whiskers, then the cat was walking away, tail high. Ren Zel moved his shoulders, thought to drop the seedpods, and then did not: they felt warm and comfortable in his hand and it came to him that he would have need of them, later.
Halfway across the glade, the cat paused in its purposeful perambulation and looked over its shoulder. Again, Ren Zel had the distinct impression that, if the animal could speak, it would this moment be saying something rather sharp to one Master Timid Sandfeet and urging him to come along quickly, now.
Thus gently persuaded, Ren Zel stepped forward. The cat watched him for a moment, then, apparently satisfied that he would do as he was bid, took up the lead.
PIECES OF WHAT had once been a ship fell, tumbling, out of the sky.
Miri, stirring beneath the shelter she did not remember taking, watched them fall, and gingerly, ready to snatch back at the first cold shock of emptiness, extended her thought to the place where his pattern should have been.
It was—there. Pre-occupied right this second, but displaying no signs of attenuation like she'd seen when he'd been dying on the Yxtrang fighter. In fact, he seemed quite amazingly busy for a man who ought to have been vaporized when the beam pierced his ship.
Carefully, not wanting to disturb his concentration, she pushed her thought a little deeper into his pattern. Her vision side-slipped crazily, and she was seeing the ground from high above, turning gently and rising slowly beneath her as—as?
Escape kite
, Val Con murmured in her ear.
The manual key opened the emergency drawer, and triggered the escape hatch.
She closed her eyes, which didn't quite get rid of the disorienting far-view of the ground. Even more carefully, she withdrew her thought from his pattern, and opened her eyes to the sky.
High up against the clouds, she saw a long, black wing, spiraling lazily downward.
THE PATH culminated in a door. The cat stopped and looked at him over its shoulder.
Ren Zel surveyed the situation. The door was set into a section of wall. The section of wall was part of a greater wall, which formed, so he was persuaded, part of the first story of a clanhouse. He glanced down at the cat.
"I am afraid I'm no use to you. My print will not open this."
The cat yawned, sauntered over to the door, stood on its back feet, braced itself with one paw against the lower door and stretched toward the latch with the other. Ren Zel sighed sharply.
"Understand me, it's useless! This is a clanhouse—I am clanless. There is no door on all the worlds of Liad which will open to my hand."
The cat stretched higher, its paw questing well below the latch.
"Merely disobliging, am I? Well, the proof is easy enough." He went forward two steps and snatched at the knob, already hearing in his mind's ear the blare of bells as the house took alarm from the touch of an intruder.
The knob turned easily in his hand. The door swung wide, silent on well-oiled hinges. The cat strolled inside, then stopped and looked over its shoulder in a way grown far too familiar.
"No." Ren Zel stared down into glowing eyes. "I cannot."
The cat came back, stropped itself one way and the other, soft and caressing, against his legs, then moved on again, down the dim hallway.
It was risky—even given the malfunction which had allowed him to open a coded door. He did know the risk. Yet the house lured him, with its promised glimpses of the life he had been denied. Surely, he thought, just a short stroll down the hall, a glance into a room or two—surely there was no harm in that?
Knowing his peril, Ren Zel stepped inside, closing the door carefully behind him, and being quite certain that the lock had caught before he followed the cat into the deeps of the house.
Time and route blurred. He thought they might have crossed a dark, deserted kitchen, he and the cat, and gone up a thin flight of stairs insufficiently illuminated by night-dims, and down another hall, or possibly two . . .
Time righted itself. They stood before another door. The cat stroked, long and sensuous, across Ren Zel's legs, then stretched high on back feet, reaching for the palmplate set far above its head.
"This is the private apartment of someone who belongs to this house," Ren Zel said, his voice barely a whisper. "
Surely
, my hands are useless to you here."
The cat did not even deign to turn its head. Ren Zel sighed, stepped forward and put his hand with absolute certainty against the coded plate. His palm tingled as the house scanned him. His shoulders stiffened beneath his many-times mended jacket, as if tensed against the grip of a hostile hand.