Shadow Man

The fem was very quiet on the ride to the starport, perched uncomfortably in the space meant for cargo, but Tatian was very aware of %er presence, %e meant trouble, %er very presence meant trouble, both with the Old Dame, if—when— %e heard about it, and quite possibly with the local authorities. If Reiss had just looked the other way…. It was hard to think that with the fem %erself sitting behind him—the mosstaas were notorious for the efficiency of their confessional techniques—and he sighed and looked sideways out the jigg’s scratched windscreen.

They had passed the city limits—unofficial, marked only by the way the buildings stopped—and the land had gone from the low scrub of the coastline to the long hills of the high plains. He had seen the transition a hundred times before, but he caught his breath yet again as the jigg topped the first big rise, and he could look out across the green-and-gold land. It was mostly flaxen and flowergrass, the flaxen distinguishable by the larger seedheads that bowed the heavy stalks into graceful arcs, but here and there he could see the bright blue patches that were daybeans in flower, or the low, dark green clumps of blue pomme bushes. This close to Bonemarche, the land was flagged for the local gatherers, the bright pennants, each one marked with the name and symbol of a Stiller mesnie, flickering in the steady breeze. Hara’s crops could not, generally speaking, be cultivated successfully—they seemed interdependent in ways the indigenes had never had the population nor the need to determine—but the mesnies were careful of their land and jealous of their privileges. There were well-worn paths through the best acreage, and as the jigg topped the next rise, Tatian could see a gathering party clustered around a wood-bodied draisine, sorting blue pomme for the markets. Redbirds, Hara’s largest land animal, circled overhead, and he was not surprised to see that netting had been spread over some of the best-looking bushes. The Traditionalists argued against the practice, saying that netted bushes had a poorer crop the following year, but most mesnies did it anyway, rotating from stand to stand. Bluepomme was too much of a staple crop, salable to other indigenesas well as off-world, not to take the chance.

“Did you get what you needed?” Reiss asked at last, raising his voice to carry over the whine of the jigg’s motor and the rush of the transports in the fast lane.

“Partly.”

“Starli’s good people.”

“I still need parts,” Tatian said. “Anyone you’d recommend at the port?”

Reiss shrugged, not taking his hands from the steering bar. “You’re better connected there than I am. I usually end up buying from Guinard’s.”

Guinard’s boasted of being the only tech supply house on Hara with multiple licenses; it was correspondingly expensive. Tatian sighed again. That meant he had the choice of paying Guinard’s prices or talking to Prane Am, and neither was particularly appealing. For a moment, he wondered if there was any point in talking to Eshe Isabon or Shraga Arsidy, but dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had formed. All off-worlders guarded their sources of supply jealously; even his closest friends would be reluctant to reveal their company’s secrets to an outsider. Am, at least, was her own agent.

The starport itself lay on the flat land of the first great plateau: barren land, by Haran standard, good for nothing but the ubiquitous drift-grass. The indigenes mixed its fibers into their bricks, strengthening the coarse clay. Stiller was rich in drift-grass, if nothing else. They had easily been able to spare the land for the port, and in any case, Tatian thought, they had been well paid. He could see the towers of the docking cradles over the roofs of the support buildings, top lights blazing red and white even in the daytime. He counted the reds as the jigg turned onto the approach lane: seven shuttles loading, which meant at least seven bulk carriers in orbit overhead. It was definitely getting close to Midsummer, and the first big deliveries from the mesnies; he only hoped he hadn’t left his repair too long.

Reiss pulled the jigg to a stop in the shade of the Central Administration building. “Do you want me to wait?” he asked.

Tatian shook his head. “No. Take your friend home, and then tell Derry what’s happened. Tell her to put some sort of plausible excuse on record, just in case someone decides to check up on us.”

“But you already paid the mosstaas,” the fem said, sounding startled, and then looked as though %e wished %e hadn’t spoken.

“I’m more concerned about IDCA,” Tatian said, still looking at Reiss. The younger man nodded, his expression for once somewhat chastened. “I want it taken care of, Reiss.”

“I will, baas,” the younger man said. At his gesture, the fem scrambled forward into the passenger seat, and he touched the throttle again. The jigg pulled decorously away from the curb, and Tatian stepped into the sudden cool of the Administration building.

Prane Am worked for the Port Authority itself, in the larger of the two repair facilities. Rather than use the maze of tunnels that connected the buildings, Tatian cut across the almost empty staging lot, blinking again at the heat and the gathering clouds. In a few weeks, this lot and the dozen loading bays it serviced would be filled to capacity, and draisines and shays would be backed up on the access roads, waiting their turn to unload. At the moment, though, only about half the bays were open; shays were drawn up to the platforms where off-worlders and indigenes directed the machines that moved the cargo. He surveyed them with a professional eye—Kerendach had been doing a steady out-of-season business for a while now, so their presence was to be expected, but what DTS was doing with a cargo that size this time of year was beyond him, and he made a mental note to check up on them once he got back to the office.

He was sweating freely by the time he reached Repair One, and he thought he heard a distant rumble of thunder: the afternoon storms were arriving as usual. He ducked through the narrow doorway, pushing hard against the stiff seal, and stopped just inside to get his bearings. For once, all the internal partitions had been folded back, opening up the full central volume. In that space, a shuttle hung, suspended from a metal cradle, dwarfing even the biggest cargo movers, its one extended wing almost touching the wall above his head. The exoskeletons that crawled across its surfaces and along the cradles looked almost human-sized by comparison. There were three of them in use, clustered around the shuttle’s steering jets. He stared up at them, shading his eyes against the cold glare of the working lights, and wondered which was Am. Before he could find an internal systems port, however, a speaker crackled on the wall behind him.

“Tatian? Is that you?”

“Hello, Am.” He waited, not quite sure of his welcome. She had sounded cheerful enough, but the speaker distorted emotion.

“Hang on a minute, I’m due break. I’ll be right down.”

Tatian allowed himself a small sigh of relief and waited while one of the exoskeletons withdrew itself along a support beam. It clicked into a port at the top of a main pillar, and a small figure emerged from its center. She climbed down the long ladder and came to join him, stopping only to enter a code in the shop computer.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, and jerked her head toward the side door. “Let’s go out.”

Tatian followed her through the smaller door into the alley that ran between Repair One and the technician’s shed next door. It was shaded but still hot, the air heavy with the oncoming rain. The dirt-drifted paving was spotted with stains of spilled coffee and aram cuds, and the air smelled of ozone and fuel cells and the heady spice of the drift-grass.

“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said. “How’re things?”

Tatian shrugged, but couldn’t repress a smile. He had half-forgotten, in the unpleasantness of their last quarrel, just how attractive she was. The close-fitting worksuit outlined the ample curves of hips and breasts; the tool belt just accentuated her tiny waist. She saw him looking and smiled back, appreciative and rueful all at once.

“Busy,” he said. “Things have been busy. And I hope I’m not taking you away from anything.”

“Nothing important,” Am answered, and looked back at the half-open door. “They had a couple jets jam when they were coming in, and the owner’s freaking. But, hey, it pays the rent.”

“Freelance job?” Tatian asked. Am, like most of the port technicians, rented time on the company equipment to do outside jobs, jobs that would otherwise be at the bottom of the company priority lists.

Am made a rocking gesture with one hand, and Tatian nodded. So-so, sort-of, the motion said, and that just meant that the job had been placed through the port’s gray market. Someone offered someone extra overtime, or a favor, or something—he himself had made that bargain often enough—and the job queue got rearranged.

“Speaking of which,” Am said, and smiled. “No offense, Tatian, but what brings you out here?”

Tatian laughed. “I need to buy parts. I’ve got a problem with the interface box, and it looks like it’ll be easier just to replace it.”

Am nodded again, her mobile face abruptly remote and serious. It was the look she always had when she was working, or thinking about work, and it had never failed to evoke an odd mix of lust and jealousy. It figured she had taken up with a mem, he thought bitterly. They would at least share that obsession.

“I can get you a box,” Am said, after a moment. “But—you have Inomatas, right?”

“Yes.”

“That I can’t do, at least not if I’m remembering your prejudices right. I can get you something secondhand, I heard there’s a Mark Three Inomata available right now, or I can get you a new, up-to-the-minute clone. Take your pick.”

“That’s not much of a choice,” Tatian said.

Am shrugged. “I know you hate clones. At least there’re no HIVs on Hara.”

“There are plenty in the port,” Tatian answered. That was another reason the pharmaceuticals spent so much time and effort on Hara: Hara was the only human-settled world that had no native HIV strain, and the off-world strains seemed to find no toe-hold in the indigenous population. Unfortunately, whatever it was that protected the indigenes—and no one had isolated it yet—had absolutely no effect on the resident off-worlders.

“For a druggist, you’re pretty phobic about used parts,” Am said.

“That’s not the issue,” Tatian said, and bit off what could easily escalate into a too-familiar quarrel. Am had a technician’s contempt for the softer sciences. “You said there was a Mark Three, a real Inomata. How would it work with the system I’ve got? And how much are they asking for it?”

“I can get it for about two-fifty, three hundred cd,” Am answered. “But that doesn’t include installation.”

“I’ve got someone who’ll take care of that.”

Am nodded. “There shouldn’t be any problem tying it into your present system—you were running the Three-Eight, right?”

“Right.” Trust her to remember that, if nothing else, Tatian thought.

“You may find it a little slower, but you’ll get used to that.”

“How much slower?” Tatian asked.

“The difference is in nanoseconds, but sometimes it feels perceptibly different, mainly when large blocks of data are involved.” Am shrugged again. “I think a lot of it’s psychological.”

Tatian sighed. He didn’t like secondhand bioware, less from any rational fears—risk of infection or rejection—than a childhood terror of bodysnatchers, the killers who had roamed the cities of Dodona, murdering for the expensive implants people wore beneath their skin. The worst of the gangs had been broken before he was born, but they had remained part of Dodonan folklore. But the alternative was a clone, and even with Am’s help and advice, there was simply too much risk of getting a defective part. “I’d rather get the real Inomata,” he said, and Am nodded.

“That’s what I’d do.”

“Will you broker for me? I’d take it as a favor, Am.”

“All right.” She glanced sideways, consulting internal systems. “It’ll be three hundred—and I don’t suppose you have it with you?”

Tatian shook his head. “I can wire it.”

“All right—” She broke off as a door opened in the technician’s shed, mobile face drawing into a sudden frown. Tatian glanced over his shoulder, curious, to see a tall mem in a sleeveless overall and a worn-looking worksuit standing in the doorway.

“I thought we were taking break together, Am,” ρe said. The accent was Haran, unmistakably, and the jealous note was equally clear.

Tatian scowled, and Am said hastily, “This is business, Mous. I’ll be over in a minute.”

“Æ?” the Haran said, with patent disbelief, and Am’s frown deepened.

“Don’t give me this shit, Mous. I’ll be in in a minute, okay?”

“Oh, yes,” the Haran said bitterly, and closed the door with a thump.

“Going native,” Tatian quoted, with equal bitterness, and Am glared at him.

“Don’t you start.”

“I thought you were straight, straight as in liking men,” Tatian said.

“I am straight,” Am said, but the words lacked conviction. “Mous, he…”

“ρe is a mem,” Tatian said. “I don’t care what ρe calls ρimself, ρe’s a mem, and that makes you at the very least differently straight from when you were sleeping with me.”

“And what the hell business is it of yours?” Am demanded. “You and I were pillow-friends, and that’s all. If I want something different, that’s my affair.”

“You gave me a hard time about going native,” Tatian said. “Just because I have to deal with the indigenes based on what they tell me they are. But I’m not the one who’s changed my tastes and not bothered to tell anyone.”

Am glared at him for a moment. “All right, I’m di, I guess. Are you happy now? It’s not exactly what I expected either.”

’’I—” Tatian stopped, shaking his head. Adults don’t change their minds, he wanted to say, not about something as important as this. And if they do, they tell people, and then they apologize. And most of all, they don’t harass me for doing exactly what you’re already thinking about doing. I don’t do trade, never have, it’s not fair— He took a deep breath. “All right. I suppose it’s none of my business. But I’ve never played trade, and you know it.”

“I know,” Am agreed, looking away, and there was a little silence. “I’m sorry,” she said, after a moment, and looked back with a smile that was more of a grimace. “I shouldn’t’ve said that. It’s this fucking planet. Mixes everything up.”

And that, Tatian knew, was as close to an apology as he was going to get. “I’ll wire you the money,” he said, and immediately wondered if he should have said more.

Am nodded, her eyes already drifting to the door. “I’ll tell Cesar to hold the box for me.”

“Thanks,” Tatian said, and she gestured vaguely.

“No problem. I’ll see you around.”

There was no alternative but to take the monorail back to Bonemarche. He stood on the high, bare platform, wishing that the knot of indigenes in janitorial coveralls hadn’t taken up all the narrow band of shade, wishing that he had a parasol like the old woman in traditional dress who waiting in solitary splendor at the far end of the platform. The sun was veiled by high, thin clouds, but the heat was fierce in the damp air; toward Bonemarche, the horizon was purple with the promise of the afternoon storms. As the notice board began to flash, signaling the approaching train, he thought he saw Eshe Isabon hurrying up the ramp to the platform, but he wasn’t in the mood for company. He stepped back, putting a pillar between them, and was glad when %e didn’t seem to notice his presence.

Not for the first time since he’d come to Hara, he found himself wondering why he’d accepted this assignment. He could have stayed on Joshua, stayed with Mali Kaysa—sane, sensible, man-straight Kaysa, complicated in ways he understood. He closed his eyes, shutting out the white sky, the dark horizon, remembering instead the lights of Helensport and the cool nights when they’d walked home together from one of the clubs or a show or even just from working late. He could almost feel her hand cool in his, hear her laughter and the cheerful voice of the demi couple, a woman and a fem, who shared the narrow garden between their rented houses. They had thrown good parties, that pair, and he remembered an image from one with special clarity: Kaysa with her mahogany hair straight as rain, for once freed from its braid to flow almost to her waist, standing in the blued light of the door lantern. She had been watching a man and a woman, friends of hers from the translators’ office where she worked, going through the first almost ritual questions, each trying to signal sexual interest without going too far, just in case the other wasn’t interested.

“You could’ve told him she was man-straight,” Tatian had said, and put his arm around her waist.

“I’m not a matchmaker,” Kaysa had answered, and leaned companionably against him. “Besides, this is more fun.”

That memory had an ironic feeling to it now, on Hara, where there weren’t any rules, or at least not ones that he could accept as normal, or even reasonable. That party had been one of the last ordinary nights before he’d been offered the Haran assignment—which paid too well, offered too much chance of promotion, to refuse—and he clung to the memory. The people had been sane, reasonable, ordinary, had known who and what they were: it was something to hold to on Hara.

He found a seat in the corner of the poorly cooled car away from the fading sunlight and settled in for the ride back to Bonemarche, listening with half an ear to the chatter of the half-dozen or so indigenes who shared the car. Outside the window, the thick grasses rose and fell in the rising breeze, the half-open seedheads of the flaxen tossing like foam. The sky over Bonemarche was dark with clouds, and he saw the first bolts of lightning streak from cloud to sea. The monorail track was the highest thing on the upper plain, always vulnerable, and he was relieved when the train negotiated the curves of the descent without incident and passed between the first buildings, following the Portroad into the city. By the time the train pulled into the station at Harborlook, the first drops of rain were falling, leaving damp patches ten centimeters wide in the dust of the platform.

He shared a ride back to the Estrange with a pair of technicians from WestSiCo, who spent most of the ride mumbling arcane shipping formulae. They reached Drapdevel Court just as the rain was ending. The court was mostly dry, for once, just a few puddles starting to steam as the clouds broke, and he pushed open the office door without bothering to take off his shoes. To his surprise, Derebought was sitting at the lobby console, the privacyscreen unfolded along the desktop edge.

“I’m glad you’re back, Tatian, these—people—have been waiting to see you.”

Tatian looked sideways into the little waiting area, wondering what else would go wrong today, and sighed deeply, recognizing the IDCA agents sitting on the padded bench. “What do you want?”

Stevins Jhirad grinned, and unfolded þimself from the bench. Þe was tall for a mem—wasn’t much like the stereotype of a mem at all, Tatian thought, not for the first time. Þe was too tall, too thin, most of all too quick of tongue and hand, more like a herm than a mem.

“To talk to you, what else?” þe said, still smiling.

“Talk away,” Tatian answered. NAPD’s dealings with the Interstellar Disease Control Agency were infrequent, but had rarely been profitable or pleasant.

“In private, if you don’t mind, Tatian.” That was Kassa Valmy, rising easily to stand by her partner. She smiled then, as though to rob the words of any threat, but Tatian didn’t feel particularly reassured.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, and waved them ahead of him into his office. If there was a problem, it wouldn’t come from business, he added silently, was more likely to be something personal—either his encounter with the mosstaas this morning, though that seemed unlikely, or Reiss. Probably Reiss, he thought, and closed the door carefully behind him, gesturing for the others to take a seat.

Jhirad settled þimself comfortably in the nicer of the client’s chairs, cocking one long leg across the other, but Valmy shook her head. “I’ll stand, thanks. I’ve been sitting all day.”

“Suit yourself.” Tatian sat down at the desk and touched the spot that lit the desktop screens. Nothing popped to the surface, neither urgent mail nor internal files requiring instant attention, and he ran his hand across the shadowscreen, transforming the display to meaningless geometric patterns. “So what can I do for you?”

“I hear you had a busy day,” Jhirad said.

Tatian glanced at þim: the mosstaas, then. “I suppose.”

“Bribing the mosstaas in broad daylight right in the middle of the Souk,” Valmy said, and gave another broad grin. “Even for Hara, that’s ballsy.”

“I don’t see any Harans objecting,” Tatian said, after a moment. “Or are you here on the chief’s behalf?”

Jhirad snorted. “Godchep Stiller wouldn’t care if you paid off a murder in his office, as long as he got his cut.”

“True,” Tatian said. “So…”

“A friendly warning,” Valmy said, and Jhirad frowned.

“Not even that. Call it advice, Tatian—and friendly advice, too.”

Tatian said nothing, waiting, watching them across the desk-top that ran with color. Jhirad and Valmy had been on Hara for nearly two hundred kilohours—better than sixteen local years, four standard contracts—and in that time they had gotten a reputation as tough but honest. If they were offering a warning, or advice, whatever they wanted to call it, he would be a fool not to listen to them.

Jhirad seemed to take his silence for consent. “Local politics are going to be complicated this year. You don’t want—none of us off-worlders want to get involved in it. You can’t win friends, not this time.”

“Call off Shan Reiss,” Valmy said, and didn’t bother to smile this time.

“What’s your problem with Reiss?” Tatian asked. “It was me who paid off the mosstaas today.”

Jhirad gave ρis partner an irritated glance. “Reiss was, is already involved, and not just in politics. He’s speaking for a man who wants to emigrate, he’s one of the witnesses who’ll swear that Destany hasn’t done trade for the required twenty kilohours.”

“That would be Reiss’s business,” Tatian said. “And yours. And it’s all legal. I never knew you two to be so concerned with one emigration case before. So tell me what’s really going on.”

Valmy laughed softly. “Your point.”

“Thanks,” Tatian said, and waited.

“What’s going on is, the local authorities have asked that we intervene,” Jhirad said. “The request comes from the highest level.”

Tatian stared at ρim for a long moment, unable to believe what he’d heard. Temelathe Stane was notorious for keeping the Concord authorities at arms’ length, for insisting on the absolute independence of the indigenous institutions. For him to ask for help—to request that the IDCA intervene in an emigration case—was almost unimaginable.

“Our bosses,” Valmy said, “would like to establish the precedent.”

“I bet they would,” Tatian said.

“What they—what we want,” Jhirad said, “is for Reiss to withdraw his statement.”

Tatian’s eyebrows rose in spite of himself. That was the last thing he had expected from these two; Valmy and Jhirad had always treated trade cases fairly, within the Concord’s laws, and they didn’t usually back down if they thought their superiors were making a mistake. On the other hand, Temelathe had never asked for help before. “Why?”

“Shan Reiss has more friends among the Modernists, and in the Black Watch, Stiller and Black Casnot, than anyone needs right now,” Jhirad said. “And the case is sensitive. Destany Casnot is being sponsored by Timban ’Aukai, who’s heavily into trade.”

Tatian nodded. “I’ve heard of her.”

“Who hasn’t?” Valmy murmured.

“Tendlathe is really opposed to trade,” Jhirad went on, “which would be more useful if he wasn’t also opposed to us—off-worlders in general, I mean, not just the IDCA.”

“That’s nothing new,” Tatian said.

“No. The problem is, they—Destany and ’Aukai—are going to be represented by local advocates, and they’ve picked a group that’s downright notorious for defending people in trade. The word on the street is that one of the three—”

“Haliday Stiller, if you know that name,” Valmy interjected.

“I do.” The herm who tried to challenge gender law, Tatian thought, and lost. Warreven’s partner.

“—is just looking for a case that will let 3im challenge the whole gender system.” Jhirad smiled again, the expression wry. “You may begin to see our problem.”

Tatian nodded again. Under other circumstances, the IDCA would be glad to see the legality of the Haran sex trade questioned in the local courts, but not when it meant questioning the off-world presence as well. Tendlathe could get entirely too much power out of this case; better to get concessions from Temelathe instead, do him a favor, and wait for a more propitious moment to attack trade.

“On top of all that, or as a result of it, Temelathe has been screwing around with the Stiller election lists,” Jhirad said, and Tatian frowned at the apparent inconsequence. “Bear with me, Tatian, it all fits.”

“Go ahead,” Tatian said, and leaned back in his chair. He heard himself doubtful and knew the others did, too.

“He’s taking a hell of a chance,” Valmy said, almost to herself. “There are a lot of people pissed off about it.”

Jhirad nodded. “Basically, he’s arranged for Stiller to nominate two unsuitable candidates for seraaliste. One is a man named Daithef, who’s considered pretty much a joke, and the other is Warreven, who is one of the advocates involved in this case. We think he’s trying to get Warreven out of the courts and is either trying to bribe 3im—seraaliste is a powerful position, the person who holds it is one of the more important Important Men—or at least get 3im out of the way, keep 3im away from trade cases for the next calendar year. It’s also possible he’s trying to bring 3im back into his party. You know—no, you probably don’t know, it was before your time—Temelathe wanted 3im to marry Tendlathe, and I think he, Temelathe, would still like to have Warreven on his side.”

“Warreven said no to that,” Valmy said, “and rumor says 3e’s saying no to the nomination, too.”

Tatian blinked, trying to imagine the person he’d seen—long hair and pointed chin, strong bones beneath skin like silk, loose vest and trousers and the clashing metal bracelets, casually kind and as casually sexual, like and not like any indigene he’d met before—married to Tendlathe Stane. The idea, the casual switch of legal gender, was too alien, and he shied away from it. It was just as strange to think of Warreven as Stiller seraaliste: it was odd to think that he might be negotiating with 3im next year.

“You know 3im?” Valmy asked.

The words were casual, but the look that accompanied them was not. Tatian smiled ruefully. “I literally ran into 3im yesterday at the Courthouse. We talked—3e gave me the name of a technician who might be able to work on my implants.”

“You’ve been—running into—a lot of awkward people lately,” Valmy said. “All of them in trade.”

Tatian sighed. “So tell me about the fem.”

“%er name’s Astfer Stiller,” Jhirad began, and Valmy made an irritated noise.

“ρe’ll give you clan and kin before ρe answers your questions. You’ve been on Hara too long, Stevi.”

“%e’s a paralegal—an advocate of sorts, but trained to handle Concord law, too,” Jhirad went on, as though ρe’d never been interrupted, “%e’s a known member of the New Agenda movement, and %e’s been doing work for Haliday on trade cases.”

“Which one is New Agenda?” Tatian asked.

“They propose that the Centennial Meeting be asked if Hara should rejoin the Concord as a full member world,” Valmy said. “And they really don’t like Tendlathe. It was New Agenda members who stood up in the Watch Council and said he shouldn’t be confirmed as Temelathe’s heir.”

Tatian whistled softly. That had taken courage, and it hadn’t done any good: Tendlathe’s status had been officially acknowledged the year he himself came to Hara.

“You begin to see how it all fits,” Jhirad said. “This may be about trade, about one emigration case, but there’s a whole lot of other things connected to it. And because of that, we—the IDCA, and through us, Customs and maybe even ColCom—have a chance to get some real influence on the government here. I’m asking you to ask Reiss to withdraw his statement.”

Damn. Tatian shook his head slowly, knowing only too well how Reiss would respond to that request. I’m going to murder the little bastard for getting me, the company, mixed up in this… “And what happens to what’s-his-name, the guy who wants to emigrate, if Reiss agrees? It’s going to matter to him.”

Jhirad looked away. Valmy said, “I don’t know. I can’t promise anything, Tatian. But if it comes up now, with Reiss’s name on it, our bosses are going to push for a trade investigation of NAPD.”

“And that’s blackmail,” Tatian said.

“I suppose,” Valmy answered. “But that’s how it’s been put to me.”

“This is not a good time to play politics,” Jhirad said, and pushed ρimself slowly to ρis feet. “Unless, of course, you’re us. Talk to Reiss, Tatian. The worst of the pressure should be off by Midsummer. That’s not long.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Tatian said. “But I don’t make any promises.”

“Fair enough,” Jhirad said equably, and slid open the door. Valmy followed him out, letting the door slide closed again behind her.

Tatian sat for a long moment, staring at the pale cream fiber that covered the walls. What Jhirad and Valmy were asking was technically illegal; more than that, it would be hard to get Reiss to go along with it, even if he were given a direct order to withdraw his statement. He, Tatian, would have to invoke Masani’s rules against trade, the threat of firing, and he hated to do that when he knew perfectly well that Reiss wasn’t profiting from his games. On the other hand, he understood the temptation IDCA was facing. To have the chance to intervene in Hara’s government, not just legally but actually at the Most Important Man’s personal request, was too good a chance to pass up. He sighed, ran his hand, flat-palmed, across the shadowscreen to wake the desktop. The IDCA agents were right when they said this was politically a difficult time, and more than that, they were also right when they hinted that NAPD was being dragged into trade. And that, the Old Dame had made very clear, was not to happen. He would do what the IDCA agents wanted, ask—no, tell—Reiss to take back his statement, but he would do it because he could not risk NAPD’s becoming involved in trade.

~

Wry-abed: (Hara) the politest colloquial term for men who prefer to have sex with men and women who prefer to have sex with women.

Warreven

The cellar room was cool, pleasantly dim, the pinlights arranged across the ceiling in patterns to mimic the stars. It wasn’t much of an illusion—the heavy beams that supported the dance floor broke the pattern, distorted it into odd geometry—but the steady pounding of drums and feet made the lights tremble like stars seen through atmosphere. Warreven grinned at the thought and earned a glare from Haliday, sitting across from him in the other corner of the private cubby.

“Relax, Hal,” Malemayn said, and reached for the jug of nightwake that stood in the center of the table. He refilled the five cups, leaving the sixth still empty, and looked at Warreven.

Before he could say anything, however, the off-world woman at his left said, “Damn Shan Reiss anyway. There isn’t time for this.”

The man beside her growled agreement, and then looked embarrassed, picked up his cup and drank to hide his uncertainty. Warreven watched him, still not certain what to make of him. Destany Casnot seemed very ordinary to be the cause of all this trouble, a big, light-skinned herm, who had once been flashily handsome but had settled into the thick-bodied Casnot middle age. It was hard to imagine that he had done trade; harder still to imagine what ’Aukai saw in him that made her want to bring him with her into her exile. Warreven glanced at his hands, folded on the tabletop, in the overlapping circles of light, seeing dirt under the broken fingernails. Reiss had said that Destany had a mairaiche, a truck garden, of his own in the scrub outside the city, between the Bounder Road and the hills; why anyone would give that up, the rare security of cultivation, was more than Warreven could understand. And to give it up for Timban ’Aukai—

“We know,” Haliday said, and managed to sound almost convincingly soothing. “He’ll be here.” Ȝe looked at Warreven then, too, and he sighed.

“I talked to him this afternoon. He said he’d come.” After I invoked his clan, our shared Watch, and a few summers screwing around with him in Irenfot, he added silently, but he did say he’d meet with us. Haliday was looking at him as though 3e’d read his thoughts, and Warreven looked hastily at the time display over the street-side door. “It’s only just time.”

Haliday made a face, and the woman said again, “I don’t have time for this.”

Warreven glanced at her. The years had not been particularly kind to Timban ’Aukai, and she had not been beautiful to start with, a rangy, raw-boned woman who wore exaggeratedly tight-waisted clothes to keep from being mistaken for a mem. She was still wearing the clothes, a wide belt cinched painfully tight over a flowing shirt that seemed meant to add bulk at the hips, but her once-fine skin had been coarsened by the Haran sun, and there was a scar along her jaw where a sun-tumor had been removed. ’Aukai looked back at him, her pale eyes—an odd, off-world color, gray like winter clouds—flicking up and down in automatic assessment. It was an expression Warreven remembered all too well—he was probably meant to remember, he told himself, and met her stare without flinching.

The music, drums and whistle, was suddenly louder, and Warreven twisted in his chair to see Reiss coming down the stairs from the dance house overhead. One of the servers intercepted him, saying something in a voice too low to be heard over the drumming, but Reiss shook his head, gesturing to the table. Malemayn lifted a hand, and the off-worlder came to join them, dropping into the remaining chair.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said cheerfully. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.” He poured himself a glass of nightwake without waiting for an invitation and smiled guilelessly around the table, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes. Haliday’s frown deepened, and Malemayn laid a hand on 3er elbow, signaling silence.

Destany said, “You know the situation, Reiss. How can you back out now?” On me, your clan-cousin—your adopted clan, that took you in: he didn’t have to say any of that, and even in the dim light, Warreven could see the color rising in Reiss’s cheeks.

“I don’t have a choice,” Reiss said, still in that too-bright tone that masked embarrassment, and Warreven leaned forward before anyone else could speak.

“’Aukai’s right, we don’t have time for this. Tell them what you told me, Reiss.”

Reiss glanced at him, the blue eyes, foreign eyes, like ’Aukai’s conspicuous even in the relatively low light. When he spoke, the false brightness had utterly vanished. “I don’t have a choice, not if I want to keep my job. IDCA came down hard on my boss, and he told me flat out, withdraw the statement, or I don’t work for him anymore. I’m sorry, Destany—” For the first time, he looked at him directly, Casnot to Casnot. “—but I’m not risking my residency.”

“You were born here,” Destany said.

“I was born in Irenfot,” Reiss said. “You know that. No offense, Stany, but I don’t want to go back there. If I lose my job, that’s the only place I’ve got legitimate rights.”

“They can’t hold you to that,” Haliday began, and Reiss laughed.

“Can’t they? I’ll have pissed off IDCA, and they have final say here.”

“Or if they do,” Haliday said, with dignity, as though 3e hadn’t been interrupted, “you can fight it.”

Reiss shook his head again. “They’re making this into a question of trade. I can’t fight that—I’ve played around too much, they make an issue of it, they can get me for that. I’m sorry.”

“Why in all hells are they so concerned about trade now?” Malemayn said, then made a face and answered his own question. “Because it’s us, and everybody knows we’re looking for a case to challenge the trade system.”

“This wasn’t it,” Haliday muttered. Ȝe sighed, and looked at ’Aukai. “Maybe you’d—Destany’d—be better off with another set of advocates.”

“Do you think it would help?” ’Aukai asked, and Malemayn shook his head.

“Probably not, unless you can get another off-worlder to swear for you. Or if Reiss changes his mind.”

“Reiss is kin,” Destany said flatly. “I don’t know off-worlders anymore.”

“All I ever wanted was for Stany to be with me,” ’Aukai said quietly. “Either for me to stay, or him to come with me. You wouldn’t think it’d be that complicated.”

Well, yes, I would, Warreven thought. You’ve run trade out of your shop for close to a local decade, you can’t expect IDCA to do you any favors now. He said nothing, however, leaning back in his chair as Malemayn turned to Reiss.

“Do you think it would make a difference to your boss, to IDCA, if we weren’t involved?”

Reiss shrugged. “I have no idea. Look, I don’t know what’s really going on, any more than you do.”

“If it did, would you make your statement again?” Malemayn asked.

“Absolutely,” Reiss said, and glanced at Destany. “I don’t want to back out on you, on my obligations. I know what I owe Casnot, it’s just—I don’t have any choice.”

“We could ask Langbarn to take over,” Malemayn said, and Haliday snorted.

“He’s—ρe’s still a mem, no matter what ρe calls himself. The courts won’t like it.”

Warreven looked at ’Aukai, shutting out the conversation. It didn’t really matter, not unless they could find some way to persuade Reiss’s boss—Mhyre Tatian, he reminded himself, with an odd thrill that he wouldn’t admit was pleasure—to let Reiss make his statement. Beyond ’Aukai, a frieze of the spirits danced along the wall, Captain and Madansa and Agede the Doorkeeper with his eyepatch and bottle of sweetrum; the painted Captain, broad-shouldered, broad-bearded, reminded him of the feel of Tatian’s body against his own as they stood for an instant in unintended embrace. He dismissed that thought before it was fully formed: that was not the way to persuade a man who opposed trade so vehemently.

“What’s NAPD’s problem with trade?” he said aloud, and Malemayn glared at him.

“What in all hells does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Bear with me, would you?”

Haliday grinned, showing sharp, feral teeth. “Raven’s the only one with an idea so far, Mal.”

Malemayn threw up his hands. “Fine.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Warreven began, then shook his head. “Have a drink, Mal. I think I have an idea.”

Malemayn made a face, but the anger was fading. He reached for the nightwake pitcher, gesturing with his other hand for Reiss to proceed.

“The Old Dame—Lolya Masani, %e owns the company—doesn’t approve,” Reiss said. “Partly it’s %e doesn’t want us getting in bad with either Customs or IDCA—there’s some stuff, semi-recreational, that we export that’s strictly controlled in the Concord, and Customs could make life very hard for us if they wanted—and partly %e just doesn’t like the idea.” He grinned suddenly, “%e’s got this tape %e gives to every newcomer, where %e lays down the law to them. No new drugs unless %e clears them, and absolutely no trade, %e’ll fire anyone who sells a permit or a residency. And %e’s done it, too.”

“So Tatian isn’t opposed to trade per se,” Warreven said slowly. “He just has to make it look good for Masani?”

“I don’t know about that,” Reiss said. “I mean, he doesn’t approve of the players—I don’t think he’d sell permits even if the Old Dame didn’t say he couldn’t.”

Warreven waved that away. “But a case like this, where the trade was well in the past, and it’s just two people who love each other and want to be together—if we offered him some incentive, some reason to change his mind, do you think he would?”

“He wasn’t exactly happy when he told me I had to pull out,” Reiss said. “Basically, IDCA made him do it.”

Malemayn said, “We don’t have anything to offer.”

“Besides money, of course,” Haliday said, “and that would be a little crude, for dealing with an off-worlder.”

Warreven smiled. “But in four days, assuming the elections go the way Temelathe wants them, I’m the Stiller seraaliste. I control the sea-harvest, the land-harvest, and everything that’s surplus to the present contracts is mine to sell where I please. Would that be sufficient incentive, do you think?”

“It’s pretty crude,” Malemayn said. “You won’t be part of the group legally, but still…”

“I think it’s clean enough,” Haliday said. “But would this Tatian buy it?”

“I don’t know,” Reiss said, sounding dubious. “IDCA won’t be pleased.”

“I would imagine it would depend on what you offered him,” ’Aukai said. For the first time since they’d come to the dancehouse, she sounded like the woman Warreven remembered, strong, decisive, and just a little contemptuous of the world around her. “Make the price high enough, and any druggist will stand up to the IDCA.”

“We can’t do anything until after the elections,” Malemayn said thoughtfully, and looked at Warreven. “But that still leaves us time. I think this’ll work, Raven. I think it will.”

Warreven grinned, enjoying the praise. If he had to leave the courts, he could at least use his new position to benefit his partners. Temelathe would expect no less—and besides, he admitted silently, it would be a pleasure to annoy the Most Important Man.

~

Omni: (Concord) one of the nine sexual preferences generally recognized by Concord culture; denotes a person who prefers to be intimate with persons of all genders. Considered somewhat disreputable, or at best indecisive.

Warreven

The room was cold, the cooling unit turned to its highest power, rattling in its corner. Warreven shivered and reached for a corner of the topmost quilt, pulling it half over his naked body. Behind him, Reiss stirred, shifted so that he was free of the quilts. Warreven could feel him sweating still, not just from the exertion of sex, and wondered again if all of the Concord Worlds were cold planets. It had seemed the thing to do, to invite Reiss home with him, when they were both flushed with the power of Warreven’s idea, but now, lying in the cold bedroom, the moonlight through the thin fabric of the shutters warring with the fitful light of the luciole in the corner, he wondered if he’d made a mistake after all. It had been months since he’d even seen Reiss, longer since he’d slept with him; the sex had been good—Reiss was always good—but it had somehow reminded him of his days as trade.

“The light,” Reiss said sleepily, and Warreven rolled to look at him.

“You want it off?”

“No, I’m going to have to go home in a while,” Reiss answered, sounding a little more awake. “I was wondering, is that one of the bug lights?”

They had been speaking franca, and Warreven blinked at the unfamiliar term. “The luciole?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t still have the bugs in it, does it?”

Warreven grinned. “Not in the city, it doesn’t. It was my grandfather’s, my mother had it fitted for grid power a few years before she died.” He looked at the softly flickering lamp, a ceramic sphere shaped like a knot of arbre vines, standing in a base like a shallow bowl. None of the holes was bigger than his thumb: the light had originally been the home of a colony of luci, the luminescent sea-flies of the peninsular coast. In the old days, before Rediscovery, you made a lamp like that by digging up a colony of luci. The queens would be confined to the center of the sphere, while the drones roamed freely, feeding them; each new generation added new light. “I’ve never seen a real luciole myself, not one that wasn’t converted. One of my great-aunts said they were noisy, always buzzing, the drones all over the place, and the shelf would get all sticky from the sugar water they used to feed them.”

“Sounds disgusting,” Reiss said, and ran a hand along Warreven’s side. His hand slipped further, cupped Warreven’s breast, and Warreven turned away, shrugging his shoulder to dislodge him. There was an instant of tension, a stillness between them like a silence, and then Reiss stroked the other’s back instead, running his fingers along Warreven’s spine in mute apology. Warreven relaxed into that touch and, after a moment, pulled his hair forward over his shoulder, out of the way.

“I should go,” Reiss said, but made no move.

“Suit yourself,” Warreven answered. “You’re welcome to stay.” The neighbors would talk, of course—they always did; he sometimes wondered what they had gossiped about before the advocacy group had bought the building—but then, they would talk anyway, once he brought the quilts to the laundress.

“Thanks,” Reiss said, and sighed, rolling onto his back. “No, I have to be in early tomorrow—I’m driving Tatian to Lissom to look at a possible surplus contract—and I don’t really want to show up in the same clothes I wore yesterday.”

He kicked himself free of the last top quilt and sat up, the sweat still a faint sheen on his back. Warreven rolled over to watch him dress, drawing the quilt up over his shoulders, glad of its warmth. Reiss was surprisingly fair where his clothes protected him from the sun; the hair of his chest and groin was unexpectedly dark against that pallor. Tatian was even paler skinned, and golden-haired, Warreven thought, like a spirit in a babee-story, and he wondered suddenly if that meant Tatian would be blond all over. It was an arresting thought; he caught himself smiling and shook the image away. It was a mistake to let himself think of the off-worlder in those terms, no matter how handsome he was, or how good his body had felt in that momentary contact. Tatian was just the man he had to bargain with for Reiss’s statement, and Destany’s freedom—nothing more, not even an object of fantasy, not if he, Warreven, wanted to win.

~

Rana, ranas, also rana band, rana dancers: (Hara) a group of men and women who use traditional drum-dances to express a political opinion; rana performances are traditionally protected by the Trickster, and by custom cannot be stopped unless the ranas make an explicit request for their audience to take political action. Ranas traditionally wear multicolored ribbons, a mark of the Trickster, as a sign of their special status.