Shadow Man

Lightning flickered beyond the windows, too far away as yet to hear the thunder. Warreven counted the seconds anyway, to fifteen, and then to twenty—more than eight kilometers away, too far to worry about—then dragged his attention back to the courtroom. No one had noticed the lapse: the judges—one from each of the clans involved in the case and a man from the White Watch to arbitrate—were still murmuring over their note boards, heads close together, bodies inclined toward the center. Behind them, the notice board displayed the particulars of the case in letters and a machine-read strip for the off-worlders that flashed brighter than the lightning. Warreven wasn’t wired; he looked instead toward the table where the brokers were waiting. Beyond them, he could see the IDCA agents and their advocate, Dinan Taskary, punctiliously respectful in his formal suit; they were technically the greater danger to his client, but he was more concerned with the brokers. All three of them—all men, or maybe the third, the slight one who wore no jewelry, was only passing—were sweating, and that was a good sign. They were all indigenes, Green Watchmen, two Maychilders and an Aldman; if they were sweating, it was not from the heat, but from worry.

Thunder grumbled, and Warreven glanced again toward the window. The storm was getting closer, a darker band of cloud shouldering up beneath the gray outriders, blue-black against the orange tiles of the roofs of Ferryhead on the far side of the harbor. As he watched, lightning flashed again, a jagged, multi-forked bolt from cloud to ground. He counted again and reached fifteen before he heard the thunder.

One of the judges looked up at the sound, an older woman, dressed in an off-world shirt and narrow trousers, but with strands of shell and glass beads woven into her graying hair. She beckoned to the nearest clerk, and said, “Lights, please.”

The young man nodded and crossed to the central podium, where he fiddled with the room controls. The lights came up strongly, blazing to life in the inverted bowls of the hanging lamps, and threw a distorted reflection of the courtroom across the lower half of the window. The clouds still visible in the upper half looked even darker by contrast.

Warreven stared at the reflection, picking out his own image—common enough, distinguishable only by position and by the loose mane of hair—from among the line of lawyers and advocates and the brokers and seraalistes that filled the spectators’ seats at the back of the room. In the imperfect mirror, the groups of people waiting for their cases to come up looked like shapes in a kaleidoscope, the bright colors of the indigenes’ traditional clothes vivid against the duller off-world palette. By contrast, the three judges behind their tall bench looked like a painting formally composed, the triangle of bodies leaning together over the one man’s noteboard, blending, through the brown arms out-stretched to balance the women on the ends, with the polished wood below.

“Æ, Raven.”

The voice was barely a murmur, but Warreven winced and turned his eyes back to the courtroom.

“Are you all right?”

Warreven nodded, knowing perfectly well why the question had been asked, and made a show of recalling something on his noteboard. The Stane judge, who as the White Watch spokesman had ultimate authority over the court, was a stickler for the proprieties and would be looking for an excuse to throw the case to IDCA. Under the cover of the gesture and the flickering text, he answered, “Sorry.”

Malemayn—they were both Stillers, and closer kin than clansmen, had been born in the same mesnie—nodded, and touched the noteboard’s screen, highlighting a meaningless bit of text. Warreven pretended to study it, and brought himself back to the matter at hand. So far, they had succeeded in keeping the case out of IDCA’s hands—the Interstellar Disease Control Agency had a deep and bitter interest in matters of trade—but they still had not convinced the judges that their client, a Trencevent from the Equatoriale, had been duped by the brokers and deserved his passage home. He could still see Chattan, a thin, wiry herm who looked almost convincingly male, sitting in their office, sea-scarred face composed, only his knotted hands betraying his embarrassment as he tried to explain his problem. The brokers had promised him a sea-factory job, he said, but had told him it wouldn’t start for another week; in the meantime, they suggested, he could make quite a bit more money playing trade for the off-worlders. Chattan had agreed—though he was not, he had said, lifting both hands for emphasis, wry-abed, had only gone with people who called themselves women—but when the week was up, there had been no factory job waiting. The brokers had shrugged off his complaint: they had found him a job, after all; they would neither return his fees nor find him something else.

Of its type, it was an unusually easy case, Warreven acknowledged—trade wasn’t a real job by anyone’s definition—but he couldn’t afford to let his attention wander, especially after his run-in with Tendlathe three days before. Temelathe was vigorous, but he wasn’t getting any younger; it was important to get precedents established now, while the Most Important Man could still be relied on to accept them as part of customary law. Still, it was hard to concentrate in the warmth of the courtroom, with the edge of thunder, the faint sharp smell of the coming rain that seeped into the building through the ventilators. He had always liked thunderstorms, had been born in one, or so his aunts said, and even at his age the promise of a storm was like a drug.

The judges settled back into their places, and Warreven fixed his eyes on the bench. Malemayn—he was the speaker for this particular case, as the most traditionally acceptable of the three partners—rose to his feet at the Stane judge’s gesture. The brokers’ advocate stood too, expressionless, showing no sign of the defeat he had to expect, and Taskary copied him at the IDCA table. Warreven touched the edge of the noteboard, closing files, and then folded his hands over the screen. The gray-haired judge—she was the Maychilder judge, closest kin to the brokers—was watching him, and Warreven met her stare without regret or anger. The brokers had a job to do, and a difficult one; people lied to them, would say anything to get out of the Equatoriale, if they were at the bottom of their mesnie, or their kinship, or just hated knowing that in Bonemarche, not quite two thousand kilometers from the jungle tracts, anyone could have all the technology, all the luxuries, just for ready money. And people lied to their advocates, too: he and Malemayn had learned early to verify the stories of anyone who claimed they had been lured into trade unwillingly. But this time, it was the brokers who had lied, and Chattan deserved some recompense.

The Stane judge nodded to the nearest clerk, who reached across to sound the court’s bell. It was metal, like the bells at the White Watch House, and its note silenced the murmured conversations in the back of the room. Even Warreven, who had heard it and other metal bells many times before, shivered at the sound. In the sudden quiet, thunder rumbled.

“The court speaks,” the clerk said. “Archer Stane speaks for the court.”

“The court decides,” Archer said, “that the Carrier Labor Brokerage, represented by Langman and Richom Maychilder and Bellem Aldman, are required to repay the fees paid to them by Chattan Trencevent. The question of fares back to his mesnie is continued until after the Midsummer holiday.”

“Mir Archer,” Malemayn said, “Chattan is living in the Red Watch’s holdfast here in the city, he has no means—”

Archer shook his head. “The case is continued,” he said, and gestured to the clerk. “Ten-minute break, Aldane.”

The clerk repeated the words, touching the metal bell again, and there was a rustle as the people in the back of the room began to move, some turning back to conversations, others moving forward as their cases were called. Overhead the display board changed, announcing the next case. Warreven looked instead at the brokers’ advocate, who met his stare with a bland smile.

“How much do you suppose he… contributed?” Malemayn said, bending over the table to collect his noteboard.

“More than we did,” Warreven answered. Malemayn managed a sour smile at that, and behind him, Warreven could see Taskary shaking his head as he joined the other IDCA representatives. “The Stane baanket should be lavish this year.”

“It had better be,” Malemayn muttered, and turned away. They all knew how the case would end now. The brokerage would return the original fee, and Chattan would vanish, ready to pay his own money to be back in his own mesnie for the approaching Midsummer holiday. The brokerage would demand at the continuation that Chattan appear, and—since it was unlikely he’d return—the case would be dismissed for lack of a plaintiff. Chattan Trencevent would get his money back, which was most of what he wanted, and the brokers who provided the off-worlders with a lucrative service weren’t unduly embarrassed. It was, Warreven thought, an elegant, if not an ethical, solution.

“We’ll send the voucher as soon as it’s processed,” the brokers’ advocate said. “Will tomorrow morning be convenient?”

Malemayn nodded. “Fine.”

“I have every confidence in you,” Warreven said, and meant it. The sooner the fee was returned, the sooner Chattan would head for the Equatoriale, no matter what any of them said to him about court dates.

The other advocate nodded in ambiguous acknowledgment, the hint of a smile just touching his thin mouth, and turned away.

Malemayn sighed. When he was sure the brokers and their party were out of earshot, he said, “Well, so much for this one.”

“We got the fee back,” Warreven said.

“True.” Malemayn glanced at the window and the massing clouds. “You want to catch lunch in the district? I doubt we can get back to Blind Point before that breaks.”

Warreven nodded, and they threaded their way through the crowd to the door. Outside, in the wide hall, it was suddenly dark. Warreven blinked twice, and nearly walked into a woman in full traditional dress. The hem of her weighted skirt, heavy with shells and glass, slapped his shins, but she was hurrying and did not look back. He made a face, and a tallish person—male by dress, but as ambiguous as Warreven himself in face and body—gave a sympathetic smile. Warreven smiled back, glad as always of the odd-bodied’s unpredictable kinship, and started down the stairs to the central lobby.

The air smelled abruptly of rain, the thread of breeze from the main doors suddenly cool and cleansed. Malemayn muttered something under his breath, but Warreven threw back his head, enjoying the change. The noon rains would bring no more than temporary relief from the day’s heat, but even that was worth savoring, with Midsummer so near. Thunder rumbled outside, along, sharp roll like the sound of a tonnere drum, and Malemayn said, “So much for getting in before the rain.”

Warreven shrugged, and pushed through the doors onto the narrow portico. It was raining, all right, the big soft drops that preceded the main storm, and the clouds were almost blue in the eerie dark. A breath of wind wound around the columns that held up the roof, tasting of sea and storm, licking at his skin like electricity. He suppressed the desire to run out into it, down the five stairs that led up to the courthouse and out into the open space of the plaza, and turned his face to the clouds. A drop of rain struck his cheek, carried by the fickle wind; he blinked, and lightning split the clouds overhead, a great streak of light followed half a heartbeat later by the crack of thunder. He stood dazzled, and someone ran up the steps into the shelter of the porch, colliding with him at the top.

“Sorry—”

They had caught at each other instinctively to keep from falling, and Warreven found himself looking up into a handsome, bearded face. He smiled, and the stranger smiled back and released him.

“That was close.”

The voice was off-world, as were the fair skin and hair. Warreven let go with some reluctance, and answered in the off-world creole, “But off the ground, anyway.”

The off-worlder nodded, and looked back over his shoulder at the clouds. He was breathing hard from his dash across the plaza ,and his shirt was splotched with damp patches the size of a child’s hand. A few drops of water clung to his neat beard, and some of his golden-red curls were flattened against his skull. He was, Warreven realized, extremely handsome.

“Still too close for me,” the stranger said, with another smile that showed white and even teeth—off-world teeth, Warreven thought, automatically. The stranger nodded, still casually polite, and walked past him into the building.

Warreven watched him go, and Malemayn said, from the doorway, “Do you know him?”

Warreven shook his head. “I wish I did.”

“God and the spirits.” Malemayn looked quickly over his shoulder. “Do you mind, Raven?”

“Anyone would think you were wry-abed, not me,” Warreven said. “There’s no one here, Mal. Relax.”

“You should still be more careful,” Malemayn said. “What if one of the judges heard?”

“If they haven’t taken my license yet,” Warreven began, and Malemayn shook his head.

“They haven’t taken your license yet because Temelathe likes you. Don’t push it—”

The rain came down in earnest then, drowning his words in the rush of water. Warreven looked out across the plaza suddenly obscured, as though by fog; overhead, the clouds were already lighter. He raised his voice to carry over the downpour. “Do you know him?”

“Æ?”

“Him. The guy who ran into me.”

Malemayn gave him a look, exasperation and affection com-pounded. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“No.” Warreven looked up at the sky, gauging the storm’s progress. Lightning flared again, and Malemayn’s curse was covered by the thunder. “Do you?”

“Yeah, sort of,” Malemayn said. “He’s a pharmaceutical—NAPD.”

“I don’t know them.”

“No reason you should, they’re not that big—one of the Fifty, I think. This one, he runs their local office.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Raven—” Malemayn stopped, shook his head. “Titan, Tatian, Tatya, something like that. I think his family is Mhyre. Can we go now?”

“I thought you didn’t want to get wet,” Warreven said, and heard Malemayn swear again.

~

Player: (Concord) one who participates in trade; a person who does not con-form to any of the culturally recognized patterns of sexuality or who wishes to indulge in sexual behaviors and roles not acknowledged by Concord culture, and who is willing to pay professional or semi-professional prostitutes to take on the reciprocal role(s).

Trade: (Concord) commercial or “specialty market” sexuality; on Hara, specifically the practice of paying indigenes of any gender for sexual favors and to assume sexual roles not usually taken by persons of that particular gender. Commercial sex is normally regulated by the IDCA, which provides medical and legal recourse for all parties, but Haran trade remains outside Concord law. In conversational usage, “trade” can also refer to the various quasi-legal markets for residence papers, travel permits, etc. that make it possible for Concord citizens to remain on Hara.

Mhyre Tatian

Tatian shook himself as he passed into the dimly lit main hall. His shirt still clung to his back, and he shrugged his shoulders until he’d freed the damp cloth. Then he glanced sideways, waking his system and bringing up the sleeping file. The time and place of the meeting blazed against the shadows, and he blinked them away, the room confirmed. At least he had gotten to the courthouse before the worst of the storm had hit. He could hear it now, a steady roar against the roof, filling the near-empty hall with the sound, and he wondered if the person he’d run into at the top of the steps had far to go. Whoever—she? it had been a long time since Tatian had seen an indigene who did not dress to demonstrate legal gender, but he had distinctly felt breasts beneath the thin silk of her tunic, in the moment they’d collided. Still, who-ever she was, she was rather nice looking. It was just a pity she—or 3e? 3e could be a herm, which would be too bad—was an indigene. Of course, working in the courts, she might be assimilated— He broke that train of thought sternly. She might also be a herm, which would mean he himself wouldn’t be interested. And, anyway, Masani was right: even the most assimilated indigenes were very different from off-worlders. Besides, he had work to do. He reached for the control pad buried between the bones of his right wrist and fingered it, summoning a second display. A summary of the last two years’ licensing agreements, with the legal and extralegal payments that had accompanied them, flashed into the corner of his vision. The display was accompanied by the tingle deep in his nerves that meant that the failing connection was getting worse. He shook his hand tentatively—it had helped before—and felt another jab of static. Isabon was right, he was going to have to get it repaired soon, but where on Hara was he going to find techs who could do that kind of microsurgery? There were techs in Startown, sure, but too many of them stayed on Hara only because they weren’t good enough to get hired off-world. The technicians in the port itself were good, but they were hardly surgeons, and they charged what their monopoly would bear. NAPD would pay for the surgery, but he himself would have to buy the parts, with no guarantee that the Old Dame would reimburse him for anything. And on top of that, going to the port would mean seeing, and probably dealing with, Prane Am. It was an old problem, new indecision. He put it aside again and passed through a green-painted door into the maze of inner corridors.

These halls were brightly lit and narrow, and the sound of the rain was abruptly distant, as though someone had thrown a switch. He blinked in the sudden light, then found his bearings and turned down the first of the corridors that would eventually lead him to the Licensing Bureau. It was always tricky dealing with Wiidfare, and NAPD’s general export permit was up for renewal in another year; it was going to be awkward to turn down the extra personnel permits without jeopardizing next year’s negotiations, or this year’s harvest permits. All in all, he thought, it promises to be an interesting meeting.

The door of the Licensing Bureau was half open, as always, and the waiting room was crowded. Half a dozen indigenes were sitting in the lesser chairs toward the left side of the open space, and Tillis Carlon was already waiting in the place of honor beside the empty secretary’s desk. Tatian lifted an eyebrow at that—Carlon was chief-ops for Norssco, NAPD’s closest current rival—but schooled himself to present an indifferent front. Carlon nodded a greeting, but said nothing. Tatian matched the gesture and looked through the glazed green glass wall behind the desk into the clerks’ room. It was as cluttered as ever, crowded with indigenes and old-fashioned data disks the size of a man’s palm and binders and folders crammed with real print. The computers were plainly visible, boxy monsters dominated by their display screens and touch- and keypads, and half the secretaries wore dark view-lenses that made them look blind. That was the best there was, on Hara, and Tatian wondered again where he would find someone to repair his implants.

Wiidfare’s receptionist was nowhere in sight, but before Tatian could ask, the door to the inner room opened, and the young mem appeared, tucking ρis data lenses into ρis pocket. His pocket, Tatian amended silently, and his lenses. Beivin Stane was clearly a mem—ρis real gender was obvious in ρis beardless face, ρis slight, almost boyish build, even in ρis temperament, the stolid precision with which be managed Wiidfare’s business—but on Hara, ρe was legally and culturally a man.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mir Tatian—Ser Mhyre, that is,” Beivin said, ρis light voice completely without expression. “Ser Tillis, I’m afraid the appointment is filled after all. If you come with me, Ser Mhyre?”

ρe held open the inner door, but Tatian looked at the other off-worlder. “Poaching?”

Carlon shook his head. “Call me.”

“I will,” Tatian answered, and followed Beivin into the inner rooms.

Wiidfare rose from behind his massive desk as the door opened and gestured expansively toward the visitor’s chair. “Mir Tatian, how good to see you. I trust everything was in order, that the package met your expectations?”

Tatian seated himself, leaning back with a comfort he didn’t entirely feel. “The permits came through fine, thanks, Mir Wiidfare, but the numbers seem to have gotten garbled in the transmission. I have two more exploration tags than I need, and an extra residency permit for Bonemarche. I need to clear this up before I can authorize the release of payment.”

Wiidfare made a production of consulting his desk. It was a recent model, Tatian realized, had been standard in the Concord Worlds as recently as five years ago: one more reminder of Wiidfare’s status. Wiidfare was Temelathe Stane’s nephew, and Temelathe was the unofficial master of Hara’s indigenous government—the Most Important Man, the indigenes called him, with bleak humor—but then, Temelathe had a dozen nephews. Not all of them were as close to Tendlathe as Wiidfare was, either, Tatian thought. I’d give a great deal to know how many of them have desks like this one.

“My records show that you requested five exploration tags,” Wiidfare said, “and four residency permits. One for you and for each of your employees. I’m rather surprised you’re able to manage with so few people.”

“We hire locals where we can,” Tatian said. “Company policy. Which is why Stane Derry—Dere bought Stane—doesn’t need a permit. It’s an easy mistake to make, but I do need to clear it up. And we only want three tags.”

“There must have been a transmission error.” Wiidfare looked at his desk again, one hand moving gently over the shadow screen embedded in its polished surface. “I can withdraw the tags without a problem, but rescinding a residency permit is always difficult—almost as hard as issuing one. The Colonial Committee, IDCA, they make it very tough to grant them on the spur of the moment. I should warn you that if you find you need a permit on short notice, I can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to get one. I would suggest that you keep it—you never know when you’ll have visiting staff, technical advisers, coming in.”

So that was what this was all about, Tatian thought. Wiidfare was playing trade—not for the first time, either—and playing the game rather crudely. Tendlathe’s people didn’t usually participate, but then, Wiidfare was in a position to make serious money, metal money, out of it. He said, “I understand. The permits are expensive, though, and we’re not projecting bringing in anymore staff for at least a couple of years. Under the circumstances, I’ll have to pass.”

“It wouldn’t be that hard to find someone to split the costs,” Wiidfare said. “I know, oh, at least a dozen people who have been trying to get permits for years.”

And all of them are players, Tatian thought. And probably high-paying players, too. He hesitated for a moment, considering his options, and then smiled widely. “Mir Wiidfare, let me be blunt. We’ve had a good relationship in the four years I’ve been on Hara, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. But you know my boss’s position on trade. I appreciate the opportunity, but I have to refuse.”

“There are other companies,” Wiidfare said.

“I know,” Tatian said. “But thank you for thinking of me.”

There was a silence, and for a moment Tatian wasn’t sure if he’d gone too far. Then Wiidfare leaned back in his chair and laughed, and the off-worlder released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

“All right, suit yourself,” Wiidfare said. “Three exploration tags and three residency permits, one a semi-permanent for Shan Reiss, who was born in Irenfot of off-world parents.” His hands were busy on the desktop as he spoke; an instant later, a disk writer whined to life on the far wall. “Though if your boss so disapproves of trade, I’m surprised Mir Reiss has lasted this long.”

“Really?” Tatian said, and made his voice as bored as possible. Reiss was hardly a player, except by the Haran definition; he was omni, but that was all—and he’d been raised as a Haran and, could be excused a little confusion. More to the point, he didn’t profit from his games.

Wiidfare snorted, and pointed to the diskwriter. “The forms are there, if you’ll sign them.”

Tatian collected the disk and, at Wiidfare’s impatient gesture, spun a secondary reader to face him on the desktop. He fed the disk into it and paged quickly through the files, making sure all the codes were correct. “Thank you, Mir Wiidfare, this looks perfect.” He touched the locking sequence as he spoke, fixing the text and signing his name and various identification numbers at the same moment.

Wiidfare nodded, his expression sour, and accepted the disk. “I’ll need payment within twenty-four hours.”

“I’ll transfer the—processing fees—this afternoon,” Tatian answered. He did not need to add that they would include a sizable payment for Wiidfare himself.

“Excellent,” Wiidfare said. “Then, if you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course.”

Tillis Carlon was no longer in the outer office, and Beivin was cloistered behind ρis view lenses, fingers busy on an analog pad. For a moment, Tatian was tempted to interrupt him, to demand to know where Carlon had gone, but controlled his anger. Haran corruption was like nothing else in human space; one paid what one had to and put up with the side games. But he would call Carlon and find out what he had been doing here.

The rain was still loud in the main hall, and Tatian was not surprised, as he pushed his way through the doors onto the narrow porch, to find the two indigenes still waiting, both looking out into the rain. One was definitely male, legally and in reality, a tall man, light-skinned for a Haran, with close-cut black hair and a beak of a nose that dominated his profile. The other, the one he’d run into on the stairs, was shorter and darker, and the loose silk shirt and vest and soft trousers effectively hid the relative sizes of hip and breast and shoulder. Deliberately hid? Tatian thought, and wondered again about a Haran who would conceal legal gender. Haran law and custom demanded that everyone belong to one of the two acknowledged sexes; society enforced that artificial distinction rigorously. It was even rumored that there were still mesnies, along the southern coast toward Fariston and in Pensemare on the Southland, where children born mem, fem, or herm were surgically altered to conform to the parents’ wishes. That seemed unlikely—even on Hara, the child’s health was usually considered paramount—but the thought was discomfiting. It was almost as odd to imagine a Haran embracing ambiguity of body.

The stranger saw him looking then and smiled. Tatian smiled back, but the expression was cut off by a sudden static pain in his wrist. It ran quickly up the molecular wires and reached his elbow, spreading a tingling numbness before he could grab the controlpad and shut the system down completely. The stranger had been watching, curious as a cat, and Tatian felt himself flushing. To his surprise, however, it was the other indigene who spoke first.

“Are you all right?” His voice, cultured and almost accentless even in creole, held nothing but a mild concern, but Tatian felt the color deepen in his face.

“Fine, thanks.” That was patently a lie, and he added reluctantly, “I’ve got a loose connection in my implants, that’s all. It stings a little sometimes.”

“I would imagine.” That was the first stranger, the ambiguous one. The voice was as indeterminate as the body and clothes, in the midrange that could mean almost any gender. He could just see the swell of breasts beneath the silk, not quite concealed by the drape of the vest, but the stranger was too wide through the shoulders, too narrow-hipped, to be a woman. Probably a herm, then, Tatian thought, with regret: 3e wasn’t busty enough, or long legged enough, to be a fem. Ȝe probably passed for male, though—most herms did—but it was still hard to be sure from 3er clothes. It was too bad; 3e would have been a striking woman.

“Do you think the rain bothers it?” 3e went on, and Tatian shook his head.

“I doubt it. Though anything’s possible.”

“There’s a woman over in Startown,” 3e said, slowly, and tilted 3er head to one side. In that position, 3e looked more than ever like a cat, pointed face and wide-set eyes framed by a mane of coarse black hair. “She does some work on implants.”

“Oh?” Tatian said, without much hope, and the indigene nodded.

“Starli—Starli Massingberd, her name is, she’s no kin of mine. But she works the kittereen, the jetcar circuit, cars and racers. You might talk to her.”

That sounded promising, after all, and Tatian nodded. “Starli Massingberd—in Startown?”

“She has a shop there. She’ll be on the rolls.”

“I’ll look for her,” Tatian said. And I’ll also check her out with Reiss. Shan Reiss raced kittereens, when he wasn’t driving for NAPD. “Thanks.”

The indigene smiled again. “I’m Warreven.” Ȝe nodded to the other indigene. “And Malemayn. We’re both Stillers.”

“Ser Mhyre Tatian.” Tatian held out his hand in automatic reflex, lulled by the Creole, and Warreven took it gingerly. Assimilated 3e might be, but the handshake was still unfamiliar.

“We were heading out for lunch,” Warreven went on, releasing the other’s hand. “Care to join us?”

Behind him, the other indigene—Malemayn—made a soft noise that might have been laughter or disapproval, or both. Tatian considered for an instant. It wasn’t a proposition, exactly, more of a first move, but the hints of interest, of trade, were unmistakable. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve got to get back to the office.”

“Maybe some other time,” Warreven said, and Tatian nodded. The rain had almost stopped, and watery sunlight was beginning to show through the clouds. Curls of steam rose from the puddles in the plaza, and the air smelled suddenly, violently, of seaweed.

It wasn’t a long walk from the courthouse to the Estrange where NAPD had its offices, but the sun was fully out by the time Tatian reached the arcade that led to Drapdevel Court. All but the largest puddles had evaporated, leaving wet shadows that shrank as he watched, and his shirt clung damply to his body in the revived heat. The old woman who owned the rights to the vendor’s pitch at the mouth of the arcade nodded to him, but didn’t stop rearranging her stock, disordered when she’d covered it against the rain. Tatian knew better, after four years on Hara, to hope for much that he could comfortably eat or drink, but he scanned the trays anyway. She had dozens of braids of feel good, some in sheaths, the rest coiled for the smoking pot, and sticks of sourcane soaking in liquertie, a pottery jug heating over a candle flame, and, at the base of the cheap clown-glass statue of Madansa, the spirit who controlled the markets, a plug of odd fibrous stuff he didn’t recognize. That was worth investigating—he could name four proprietary drugs that had been discovered as an unknown plant in a marketwoman’s tray—and he paused to examine it. Up close, it seemed to be a web of close-growing, hairy cords wound over an inner object the size of a child’s fist. He picked it up curiously, turned it over in his hand. The cords were leathery to the touch, the hairs prickly in his palm; the dark brown skin seemed almost warm to the touch. He sniffed it warily, and grimaced at the familiar musty odor. Hungry-jack, he thought, and in the same instant found the cross-shaped mark at the tip of the ovoid where the pod’s pseudomouth had been. He pried back one lip, using the corner of a fingernail, and found the scarlet flesh of the inner pod. The old woman was watching him narrowly, and he handed it to her, saying, “Hungry-jack, grandmother?”

She nodded, weighing the pod in her hand. “They clean the pods when they take them in the seraals. This is the whole thing, dried in the sun on a sand bed.”

“Is there a difference?”

The woman shrugged. “It’s different—milder, but you’ll still fly, my son.”

There was no point, Tatian thought, trying to explain off-world physiology to the indigenes. Harans used the full pharmacopeia almost from the cradle; they grew up chewing poppinberry for a stimulant and drinking nightwake and sweetrum to relax, and a ten-year-old was as likely as an adult to throw a braid of feelgood on the kitchen fire after a hard day’s work. An off-worlder couldn’t hope to match that inbred tolerance. “I’ll take it.”

The old woman looked him over. “Three megs a decigram. Or all of it for fifty grams of metal.”

Hara was metal-poor, and the little that lay close to the surface tended to be tied up in the ironwood trees that grew along the slopes of the central mountains. It was hard, sometimes, for Tatian to imagine the relative worth of the off-world coins in his pockets. And Warreven, he thought suddenly, had been wearing metal bracelets—not glass or carved and painted ironwood, but bright, silver-colored metal. And so had Malemayn: they were Important Men, then, in the Stiller clan. He reached into his pocket and produced a handful of coins. The old woman set up her scale—placing it politely in front of the statue of Madansa, though, equally politely, she made only a perfunctory invocation—and set a fifty gram weight in the seller’s pan. Tatian counted out coins, six quarter-dollars from Joshua, and then five copper hundredths stamped with the Ansonia Corporation’s monoglyph to bring the scales into balance. The woman eyed the scales and took her weight away.

“Enjoy the hungry-jack, my son.”

“Thank you, grandmother,” Tatian answered, and tucked the pod into his trousers pocket with the remainder of his coins. He hadn’t saved much, given the exchange rate, by paying in metal, but then he could afford it.

He went on into the arcade, grateful for the fugitive cool of its shadow, and came out into the sudden brilliance of the court. The bricks that paved the central space were still a centimeter deep in water, and the sunlight glanced from its surface as if from a mirror. The walls of the surrounding buildings were patched and flecked with the reflected light. Tatian sighed, anticipating a flooded cellar, and waded through the blood-warm water, scattering the sky’s bright image and making the shards of light dance across the red brick walls. He fetched up gratefully on the low doorstep of NAPD’s office and stooped to free himself from his wet shoes, peering in through the open door. Stane Derry—Derebought Stane, the office’s only full-time botanist, looked back at him from the door of her own office, her broad face eloquent in its lack of expression.

“How’s the cellar?” Tatian asked, and stepped barefoot into the building, leaving his shoes to dry on the stone sill.

“Don’t ask,” Derebought answered, and then relented. “The pump’s screwed up again. Reiss is down there now, trying to get it going. We’ve got a couple of centimeters of water wall to wall.”

Tatian nodded, already relieved of the worst of his worries. The backups and other records were stored in watertight cases that stood a quarter of a meter off the stone floor: there would be no real damage from this flooding. “I thought Reiss was in Irenfot for the races.”

“He was,” Derebought said, and shrugged. “But I guess they got a bad storm, and it washed out the track. So when he showed up here, I figured I’d put him to work.” She looked down at her desktop. “Did you get the permits straightened out?”

“I think so.” He reached for the secretary cube that stood inside the doorway and ran his hand over the input strip to trigger the output nodes. Images blossomed in the air before his eyes, mixed icons and text, nothing of immediate importance, and the failing connection surged again, sending a wave of cold down his arm. “Have you heard anything about Norssco moving into any of our areas?”

Derebought shook her head. “Not a thing. Why?”

“Tillis Carlon was in Wiidfare’s office when I got there. I thought maybe someone was sending a message.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Derebought said, and shrugged. “Then again, maybe Wiidfare’s dabbling in trade again.”

“Oh, he’s doing that.” Tatian reached for the keypad, used it to move to the next screen of messages, not wanting to risk his implanted control pad. “Reiss is downstairs?”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

Tatian lifted his sore arm. “The damn connection’s getting worse. I’m going to have to get it looked at.”

Derebought nodded. “Good luck finding someone.”

“Yeah. Ask Reiss to stick his head in my office when he gets through in the cellar, would you?”

“Sure.”

“And I bought this on the way in,” Tatian said, and pulled out the uncleaned pod. “It’s hungry-jack, dried whole. Have you ever heard of preparing it that way?”

Derebought frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it dried like that. I’ve seen it whole when it was fresh, but I always thought you had to clean it before you could use it. We always did in my mesnie, anyway.” She held up her cupped hands. Tatian tossed it across to her, and she turned back into her office. Tatian followed, leaned against the door frame. Derebought set the hairy pod on her desk, pulling her maglamp down over it, and peered down through the lens. “Interesting, though.”

“Run a full analysis on it, covering and all,” Tatian said. “See if anything turns up.”

Derebought mumbled agreement, already probing the web of cords with a blunt glass rod, and Tatian sighed, recognizing her absorption. He flicked a toggle on the secretary, setting the sys-tem to forward calls to his desk. “I’ll be in my office,” he said, and pushed open the door.

The desk woke at his approach, sensing his presence, and Tatian flinched as the recognition pulse tingled through his skin. The desktop lit, producing half a dozen working screens scattered through the clear surface, and Tatian scanned them as he sat down. Most were old business, and none was urgent; he reached for the shadowscreen, splaying his hand across its virtual surface to fit his fingers to the current control configuration. He flicked a “button"—a literal hot spot, a bump of warmth under his finger—and a new screen appeared, offering access to Bonemarche’s communications system. It was primitive by comparison to the systems current on most of the Concord Worlds—even now, a hundred years after contact had been reestablished with the rest of human-settled space, most indigenes who lived outside the urban areas didn’t have access to the planetary net; it had only been last year that all the mesnies had gotten a terminal—but it was at least adequate for communications within Bonemarche itself. He ran his fingers over the shadowscreen’s shifting spaces, summoning contact codes for Norssco and then for Tillis Carlon. That matter needed to be settled now: Carlon needed to be disabused of the notion that he could poach on NAPD’s territories.

A panel slid aside on the wall, revealing a meter-and-a-half-square flat screen. A red dot appeared, indicating the camera position; Tatian slid his finger down another control, fading it to near-invisibility, then flicked the control away. Glyphs swam across the base of the screen, and then a face appeared, a stocky, dark-skinned woman with a Norssco badge at her collar, the camera dot centered like a misplaced caste mark between her eyes.

“Can I help you, ser?”

“Ser Mhyre Tatian, for Tillis Carlon.”

“Ah.” The woman’s eyes flickered as she consulted some internal display. “I’ll patch you straight through, ser.”

That was a good sign. Tatian waited while the screen went blank and then reformed to reveal Carlon sitting at a desk that very nearly matched his own. A line of icons flickered in the upper left corner of the screen—security programs currently running, save-file protocols in effect, nothing out of the ordinary—and Tatian noted them with one corner of his mind, intent on the image in front of him.

“Tatian.” Carlon sounded distinctly relieved.

“You said I should call.”

“Yes. I thought I owed you an explanation.”

Tatian nodded once, and Carlon gave a smile that was almost a grimace. “Wiidfare asked me to come in then, said he’d had some one cancel an appointment. We—I’ve been having a little difficulty with our residency permits lately.”

From Wiidfare, or from ColCom and the IDCA? Tatian wondered. Norssco had always had a reputation for doing trade in a big way. Not that people of Carlon’s rank were involved—at least, not that much—but Norssco employed a good seventy-five or eighty junior staff, secretaries, technicians, backcountry brokers, most of whom supplemented an inadequate income by selling permits to players. But that was none of his business, as long as Carlon wasn’t interfering with NAPD. “So have we,” he said, voice neutral, and Carlon’s smile widened briefly.

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Wiidfare offered me an extra permit, with the usual string attached,” Tatian said. “I hope he didn’t get any ideas about that from you.”

Carlon shook his head. “If there are any extra permits, Tatian, I want them for me.”

“One other thing,” Tatian said. “I will take it very badly if Norssco reps show up in the peninsular mesnies. Clear?”

“I—” Carlon stopped, closing his lips tight over whatever else he would have said. “Clear enough. I don’t appreciate threats, Tatian.”

“It’s not a threat,” Tatian said, and smiled. “It’s a promise.”

“Clear,” Carlon said, face grim, and Tatian broke the connection. He leaned back in his chair, watching the panel slide closed again over the flat screen. Norssco would bear watching now, at least until after the harvests that were due at Midsummer had all been delivered, but it had been important to state NAPD’s position as explicitly as possible.

He reached for the shadowscreen again, trailed his fingers through the varying sensations, cold and hot, rough and smooth, adjusting the desktop to a more comfortable working configuration. Lanhoss Mats, the shipping wrangler, as well as Derebought’s partner, had left a long, thickly annotated file updating his projections for the weeks following the harvest—storage space available, accessible, and already rented, and the ships scheduled to land and the backup craft available. Tatian sighed, looking at it, but dragged it to the top of the file. The sooner he looked through it, the sooner he could turn it back over to Mats, and he tapped the icon to open it.

The soft sound was echoed, more loudly, from the doorway, and a familiar voice said, “Derry said you wanted to see me?” Tatian pushed the file away with some relief. “Yeah. Come on in.”

Shan Reiss seated himself warily in the visitor’s chair. He was young to be NAPD’s chief driver, and looked younger, so that Tatian frequently had to remind himself that Reiss had been born on Hara, and knew the backcountry as well as any indigene. He was a thin, tall man, all whipcord muscle, brown skin burned darker by the planet’s fierce sun—could have passed for an indigene, Tatian thought, not for the first time, if it weren’t for the vivid blue eyes. At the moment, those eyes were very worried, and Tatian wondered just what he’d been up to. As Wiidfare had implied, Reiss hung out in the trade bars and dance houses; if he was in trouble, it would involve sex. But if he wasn’t selling permits, it was no one’s business but his own.

“Do you know anything about a tech named Starli?” he asked, and saw Reiss’s shoulders slump fractionally. “She’s a Massingberd, I’m told.”

“Yeah, I know her.” In spite of himself, Reiss sounded surprised, and Tatian hoped whatever trouble he was in wouldn’t come home to the company.

“Is she any good? Good enough to work on my implants, I mean.” Tatian touched his wrist. He had been complaining about the bad connection for a month now.

Reiss tilted his head to one side, an indigene’s gesture. “Starli’s very good, but she is local. She’s not licensed to work on the full suite, just on the stuff the kittereen drivers carry.”

“Would she work on mine?” Tatian asked. They all knew, and Reiss better than most, as involved as he was in the jet-car races, how expensive it could be to get the necessary certifications. A lot of indigene techs just didn’t bother to get the higher-level, more costly papers, but still had the necessary skills to handle the implants. The trick was finding the ones who were genuinely competent.

“She might,” Reiss said. “She doesn’t have a lot of use for off-worlders. But if she agreed, she’d do a good job. Where’d you hear about her, anyway?”

“I ran into someone at the courthouse,” Tatian answered. “Literally. We ended up talking, and I mentioned I needed some work done. And 3e mentioned Starli.”

“Did you get a name? It might be somebody I know.”

“Warreven. Ȝe’s a Stiller.”

Reiss grinned. “I know Raven. He’s a big kittereen fan—I was surprised I didn’t see him up at Irenfot, but I guess if he was in court, that explains it.”

“What’s 3e do?” Tatian asked. He still hadn’t gotten used to Reiss’s habit of translating the indigenes’ two genders into normal speech.

“He—sorry, 3e’s an Important Man.” Reiss used the franca words, switched back to creole. “Ȝe and a couple of 3er cousins, they’re advocates. They specialize in trade cases, defending prostitutes, marijaks, you know. Lately, I heard they were taking on a couple of labor brokers for fraudulent hiring.”

“That’s going to win 3im friends,” Tatian said. The labor brokers were under Temelathe’s direct protection—were licensed by him personally—and were one of the more lucrative parts of the Most Important Man’s private empire. Temelathe’s power might technically be based on his position as Speaker of the Watch Council, and indirectly on his status as the direct heir of Captain Stane, but the money that supported all that came from off-world sources.

“Oh, yeah,” Reiss said, “and that’s not the best of it, either. You know who one of 3er partners is?”

Tatian shook his head.

“Haliday Stiller.”

Tatian shook his head again. The name was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“You remember,” Reiss said, with a hint of impatience. “Ȝe took the clan to court, all the way to the Watch Council, over whether 3e could register as a herm.”

“That was before my time,” Tatian said. But he did remember the talk; the case had been only a few years old when he first came to Hara. Haliday Stiller had demanded the right to call 3imself a herm on legal documents, and the Watch Council, officially the highest indigenous authority, and Temelathe’s puppet, had not only refused to allow it, but, for good measure, had reassigned Haliday’s legal gender, decreeing that, since 3e wouldn’t choose, the proverbial “reasonable man” would see 3im as a woman. But the person he had seen with Warreven had definitely been male—and the name was Malemayn, he remembered suddenly. “Would Starli do the work if you introduced me? I need to get it done soon.”

“I can ask,” Reiss said, accepting the change of subject, and looked down at his hands. He was wired, too, had gotten his suit as part of a corporate scholarship deal. “I have to go over to Kittree Row tomorrow morning anyway, I’ll ask then. You free in the afternoon?”

“I can make time,” Tatian said. “Thanks, Reiss.” “No problem,” the younger man said, and rose easily. Tatian watched him go, and turned his attention back to the files on his desktop, trying to ignore the faint static buzz in the bones of his hand. Tomorrow, he told himself, tomorrow, he would find out whether or not he’d have to go to the port for the repairs.

~

Seraaliste, seraalistes: (Hara) the man or woman within each clan who is primarily responsible for negotiating with the off-world buyers; he or she is also responsible for mediating among his or her clan’s mesnies. This is an elective office.