Starfishers - Starfishers Triology Book 2

Nine: 3048 AD

Operation Dragon, Danion

BenRabi started to push into his cabin, still glaring at the Sangaree woman.

"I should've bent her on The Broken Wings," Mouse snarled. "You should've... " He had not forgiven Moyshe the weakness that had left her alive.

"I can't stomach contingency assassinations, Mouse."

"Yeah? Look over there and think about it some more. How much mischief could she do?"

"All right. So it makes a perverted kind of sense. If you figure a ghost like The Broken Wings will come back to haunt you."

"It will. It always does. Maybe I'll settle this up... "

BenRabi shook his head. "Not here. Not now. Not after what we just went through."

"I didn't mean right now. I'm not a fool, Moyshe. It would look like an accident."

"Let it be, Mouse."

There was no compassion in Mouse. I should be flint too, benRabi thought. But I don't have his knack for hating.

BenRabi found the things and people in his life too transient for more than mild aversion.

"She'd better move fast when we hit dirt again, then." Mouse growled. "One getaway is all she gets... I hope we find Homeworld before I check out."

BenRabi felt a twinge of jealousy. Mouse knew the nature of his Grail. His feet were set inalterably on the path that led to it, though it was a cup of blood.

"For your sake, I hope so." Moyshe laughed softly, bitterly. Sometimes he had to, or scream. "See you later." He pushed into his cabin.

He hoped their year cooped up here would soften Mouse, but feared there was no hope. Marya would not let time work. Memories of her children would lead her on...

Mouse's hate was old and strong, and deeper than Confederation culture usually ingrained. If he were indeed a Storm, that would explain it. The Storms of the Iron Legion had had an old-fashioned, Biblical way of looking at things.

Sangaree manipulations, during the war in the Shadowline, had destroyed the family.

But Mouse did not have to be a Storm. His hatred could be stardust-related.

"The joy that burns, the dream that kills," Czyzewski had called the drug only seconds before his own addiction had carried him into the big, endless dream of death. The drug was the leading plague of the age, and had touched virtually every human being. It had taken more lives than had the bitter Ulantonid War.

Stardust was the pusher's dream. It was immediately addictive. One flight and the user was hooked forever. An addict could not taper off. Neither could he withdraw cold. Nor could he substitute another, less fearsome drug in its place.

For the poor Inner Worlder addiction ended hard: by suicide, by being slain while trying to steal enough to finance another fix, or by finding death in the constant dogfighting among have and have-not addicts. And many times the end came slowly, screamingly, in an institution where the warders could do nothing but watch, protect the world by keeping the addict restrained, and try to develop hearts of stone.

The sordid facts of stardust addiction tickled the Sangaree conscience not at all. They had a product to market, a stellar to turn.

They were not innately cruel. They simply did not see humans as anything but animals to be exploited. Do the cattleman, butcher, and customer consider themselves cruel to the beef animal? Sangaree thought their customers better than cattle. More like what Renaissance Europeans thought of black Africans. Semi-intelligent apes.

BenRabi lay on his bunk and wondered about his partner. Mouse claimed his assignments were all counter-Sangaree. To date they had been, and Mouse had prosecuted them with a savage zeal, with cruel little touches, like the injection of Marya's children. But what was he doing here, now, working against the Starfishers? That did not compute.

Following the announcement of von Drachau's raid, Mouse had been in the clouds, as if he were a skying addict himself.

The Sangaree were the demons of the Confederation era. They passed as human easily. Their Homeworld lay somewhere outside The Arm. Compared to humanity, they were few in number. It was rumored that they could breed only under their native sun.

The Sangaree produced little for themselves. They preferred instead to raid, to deal in drugs and slaves and guns.

Confederation resented them bitterly. Man was their prime victim. The nonhuman races considered them merely a nuisance.

Someone softly knocked on Moyshe's door. "Come in," he said. "Mouse. Thought it was you." It was the first he had seen Mouse since Kindervoort's inquisition.

"The word's around," Mouse told him "They've all decided that we're evil, mean, bad, wicked, nasty, crude, rude, and unattractive spies." He laughed.

"The Sangaree woman passed the word, I suppose."

"Maybe. Why don't you slide out there and see what's going on? It's good for a laugh. Hell, you'd think we were as rare as dodos and smelled like skunks."

"Don't we? Morally?"

"Ahh... Moyshe. What the hell is it with you these days? Hey! You should see the competition laughing up their sleeves. But we get the last laugh. They're on their way. Kindervoort's troops snatched a couple beekies this morning. Same way he got us. Knew they were coming. Looks like he knew about everybody, except Strehltsweiter."

"Mouse, they've got to have a mole in Luna Command. Somebody deep."

"That's what I figure. It's the only answer that adds up. Moyshe, you should see the kids with their holy attitudes. Like they think they're a plane above us. Poor innocents." Mouse smiled at a memory. "You know that Williams girl? I shocked the hell out of her. Asked her her price. She missed the point. That's real innocence."

"Ah, youth. Mouse, what happened to our innocence and idealism? Remember how it was in Academy? We were going to save the universe."

"Somebody found our price." He frowned, dropped onto the spare bunk. "That's not really true. We're doing it, you know. It's just that the mechanics of it aren't what we thought they'd be. We didn't understand that everything has to be a trade-off, that whenever we changed things to what we thought they should be, we had to do it at somebody else's expense... Hell, you've got me doing it."

"What?"

"Thinking. Moyshe, what's happening with you? You always were a moody guy, but I've never seen you like you've been lately. Ever since we left Carson's... "

BenRabi's defenses stood to arms. He did not dare open up. Two reasons: you just did not do that these days, and he was not sure what was happening himself. So he masked the shadowed walls of Festung Selbst behind a half-truth.

"I'm just depressed. Maybe because I didn't get my vacation. Maybe because of Mother... I had a bag full of things I wanted to take home. Some stamps and coins I picked up in Corporation Zone. Some stuff I managed to get back from The Broken Wings. This beautiful hand-carved bone trivet from Tregorgarth, and some New Earth butterflies that would be worth, a mint anywhere else... "

"Bullroar, my friend. Bullroar." Mouse peered at him from beneath lowered brows. "I'm getting to know you, Moyshe benRabi. I can tell when something's got you by the guts. You better do something. It'll eat you alive if you keep it locked up inside."

Mouse was right about one thing. They were getting to know one another. Too well. Mouse was reading him now, and wanting to help. "Maybe. When's your next chess thing? I'll come lose a few games, tip a few brews with the troops."

Mouse frowned. He knew a light show when he saw one.

Getting too damned close!

Mouse glanced at Jerusalem, at which benRabi had been scribbling. "Well, I didn't mean to porlock, Moyshe." He rose. "I don't know if we'll have any more tournaments. Kindervoort says we'll make Danion sometime tonight. That's why I came over. Thought you'd want to know."

BenRabi brightened. "Hey, good." He pushed the Jerusalem papers back, rose, started pacing. "The waiting is getting to me. A little work... "

The rendezvous with the harvestship was anticlimactic. There were no brass bands, and no curious crowds at the receiving bay. The only Seiners around were those who had been sent to show the landsmen to their quarters and brief them about their job assignments. No one of any stature came to greet them. Moyshe was disappointed.

His guide did his work quickly and efficiently and told him, "You'd better turn in. This is the middle of our night. I'll be back early to help walk you through your first day."

"Okay. Thanks, Paul." Moyshe examined the man. Paul was much like the Seiners he had met before.

The man examined him, too, and struggled with prejudices as he did so. "Good night, Mr. benRabi."

"See you in the morning."

But he did not. Amy showed up instead, and took both benRabi and Mouse under her wing.

"Keeping an eye on us, eh?" Mouse asked.

She colored slightly. "Yeah. Sort of. Jarl said he wanted to keep you together so you'd be easier to watch."

"You don't have to be embarrassed. We understand."

"This isn't my kind of thing, Commander Storm. I'm a plumber, not a counterspy."

"Call me Mouse. Please. Or Mr. Iwasaki."

"Whatever you want. Mouse. Are you ready for breakfast?" She turned to Moyshe.

"I'm still Moyshe benRabi. All right? Yes. I could eat three breakfasts."

Work commenced immediately after tool issue and a brief class in how to find one's way around the harvestship. It never let up.

Moyshe forgot his screaming need in the pressure of the following week's labors. The memories that had been gnawing the underbelly of his soul vanished from consciousness. He flew easy, not thinking, not observing, not questioning. He stayed too busy or too tired. The Seiners were true to their promise to work the landsmen hard.

The mind-quirk he thought of as the image of the gun bothered him some, but only mildly, as he wandered through daydreams while replacing wrecked piping or damaged flow meters. He seized the vision, played with it, wrapped a few extended daydreams around it. It helped pass the time.

Kept busy, he began to enjoy life again.

"Something strange is going on here, Mouse," he whispered once when Amy was out of hearing.

"What's that?"

"This ship isn't hurt as bad as they want us to think. Look around."

"I couldn't tell. I never did any time in the line. All I know about ships is you get on, and after a while you get back off someplace else."

"What it amounts to is, there's a lot of damage, but nothing that would put something this size out of action. They could've handled it themselves. Just might have taken them a couple of years."

"So?"

"So, maybe we're here for some other reason. My intuition has been sniffing around that ever since Carson's."

"Why would they bring outsiders in if they didn't absolutely have to?"

"I don't know. The only reason you overstaff a ship is so you have personnel redundancy in case you take battle casualties. But on a ship this big two hundred people, or even a thousand, don't mean a thing. And who would the Seiners fight? Confederation? Not with a bunch of fifth columnists aboard."

"Give it time. It'll come to the top. No matter what they hope, they can't keep everything hidden forever."

"Can it. Amy's coming." Curious, he thought. Mouse did not seem interested in Starfisher motives at all.

BenRabi's first week did have its rough edges. Every encounter with the Sangaree woman became a crisis. And she could not be avoided. Her team, repairing air ducting, was working the same service passages as his.

She would not leave Mouse alone. And the certainty of purpose which made Mouse's responses predictable taunted benRabi with worries about his own incompleteness.

She did not bait him. She knew that he would do nothing but look at her soulfully, reflecting the pain-giving back at her.

She appeared from a cross-passage only seconds behind Amy.

"Damn!" Moyshe swore. "Her again."

"Restrain me, Moyshe."

"You got it, partner. Be my ass in the fire, too."

"Well, the Rat again." The Sangaree woman stood with her hands on her hips, defying him to act. Backing her were several idealistic youngsters. She had sold them a simpleminded anti-spy package. "What an unpleasant surprise. Butchered anyone lately, spy? There're lots of non-Confies aboard. You ought to be as happy as a hog knee-deep in slop."

A curious metaphor, benRabi thought. She must have chosen it especially for the Tregorgarthian kids.

The youths looked at one another, embarrassed. They shared her views, and were a rather rude bunch themselves, but their society had taught them that too much bluntness could get a person killed. Tregorgarth was a rough world.

"You could start with me. You know what I think about your fascist military dictatorship. Or don't you have the guts?"

She knew damned well that he had, but assumed that he would not respond in front of witnesses—or that she could take him if he did. She was fooling herself there, benRabi thought. She believed Mouse strictly a strike-from-behind man. He was a lot more. Two decades of training and several thousand years of combat experience had gone into making him the perfect organic killing machine.

Moyshe did not know of a weapon, or a system of close combat, that Mouse did not know as well as any man who had ever lived. Short of pulling guns, there was little she and her whole crowd could have done were he to lose his temper.

BenRabi could sense the aching in Mouse, could feel Mouse's need to show her. But his partner controlled himself. That, too, had been part of his training.

BenRabi had to exercise some self-control himself. The woman's behavior had eroded his compassion.

She was playing a more dangerous game than she suspected. It would backfire on her if she did not ease up.

BenRabi was sure the woman was working to some carefully prepared plan. Her acting had not improved. Her easy confidence betrayed.

But she was vulnerable. Her Achilles Heel was her hatred. BenRabi was sure Mouse would exploit it...

"Miss Gonzalez," Amy said. "If you're quite finished? We have work to do. And I suggest you return to yours before there's cause for an inquiry into the absence of your supervisor."

The Sangaree woman backed down. She was not ready to jeopardize her mission.

"I feel like a fool," benRabi muttered.

Eyes downcast, Mouse said, "So do I. I can't take it forever, Moyshe."

Then Amy told them, "I'm glad you restrained yourselves. Things are ugly enough without our getting physical."

She intrigued benRabi. He watched her a lot when she was not looking. He was glad she did not go for chest-pounders. He was not the type, and in the back of his mind he had begun formulating designs upon her.

Over a flow chart thick with black X's indicating trouble spots, while Amy was off requisitioning a special wrench, Mouse muttered, "It's getting hard, Moyshe. I know what she's doing, but... She's trying to make us take ourselves out of the play."

"Hang on."

"One of these nights... "

Indefatigable Mouse. When benRabi finished work he had barely enough energy to eat, then tumble into bed. But Mouse got out and mingled, made new acquaintances (mostly female), and found new interests. He sponged up every bit of information that crossed his path.

His latest thing was the Middle American football popular with Seiners. They had arrived just in time for the pre-season excitement. His interest gave him an excuse to move around.

Moyshe was afraid. Having established his pattern of mobility, Mouse might arrange a fatal encounter with Marya somewhere far from the usual groundling stomping ground.

Moyshe wondered if he should catch her alone and try to make her understand.

He remembered The Broken Wings.

He was her primary target. She was trying to get at him through Mouse. The hurt he had done her was more personal, more ego-slashing than what Mouse had done. By her reasoning, what had happened to the children could be laid at his doorstep. He could have prevented it.

He would have to watch his back. Mouse was not the only one who could arrange an accident.

"Is she alone?" Mouse asked. "They like lots of backup."

"I haven't spotted anybody yet. They could be playing it close. What I want to know is, why is she here? Everybody else has tried something. But she just keeps on being obnoxious."

"She's waiting."

"For what?"

Mouse shrugged. "We'll find out the hard way, I guess."

"Here's a notion," Moyshe said. "It just came to me. A way to warn her."

"How?"

"Tomorrow's recreation day, right?" They had been promised one day off a week. This would be the first.

"And?"

"Those kids. You know how Tregorgarthians are. They're challenging everybody to meet them in a martial arts elimination tournament. Think you could manage them? Without hurting anybody?"

Mouse thought. "I don't know if I can pull the punches anymore."

"It would be good for the boys, too."

Tregorgarthians away from home tended to become bullies. Their homeworld schooled them to believe that those who did not fight at the drop of a hat were cowards. Smacked around a little, they civilized fast.

"Might give them second thoughts about letting her suck them in," benRabi mused. "They've got to know she's up to something."

"They'd back off if they knew I was dangerous, eh?"

"I'm hoping. Sex seems to be her main hold on them. I see one sneaking out of her room almost every morning."

"Who's sneaking out of whose cabin?"

Amy had returned. "Just gossiping," Moyshe replied. "One of the girls has an assembly line going."

She bit. "Landsmen! They're right about you being immoral."

Moyshe forbore observing that the Seiners seemed to be just as loose as his own people. Amy's priggishness was personal, not cultural. She was the only Starfisher he knew who talked that morality nonsense.

Mouse did not forbear. "When did you lose yours, Miss Morality?"

"Huh? My what?"

"Your cherry. You're no more pure than Old Earth air."

She sputtered, reddened, mumbled something about all landsmen being alike.

"You're right. Satyrs and nymphs, the lot of us." Mouse licked his lips, winked, asked, "What're you doing tonight?"

BenRabi grinned. Mouse was teasing her, as he had been all week long, but she did not realize it. He used a subtler approach when he really wanted a woman.

Something within her clicked, as it did each time Mouse put her on the defensive. A different, colder personality surfaced long enough to carry her past the rough spot. "Sleeping. Alone. Did you decide where you want to cut that water main?" Then another quick change of subject. "Oh. Jarl said to tell you to sharpen your teeth. He's bringing some people to play you tomorrow. You too, Moyshe."

Mouse had become chess champion of Service Ship Three. The Seiners had been excited about it. They were fond of the game and eager for new challenges.

"Why me? I'm no good."

"Better than you think. Anyway, we like everybody to find their place in the pecking order." Her hardness faded as quickly as it had come.

"I wanted to go over to Twenty-three West. If I could get permission." He pulled the excuse off the wall, for the salving of his ego. He did not like losing all the time, even at games. "I heard there's a guy over there with some early English coins. Victorians."

She looked puzzled.

Mouse laughed. "Didn't you know? We're both mad collectors. Coins and stamps mostly, because they're easy to lug around."

Frowning over them, Amy reminded benRabi of Alyce. So many of their facial expressions were similar. "It looks like you're mad everything. Chess. Archaicism. Collections. Football and women."

"That's him, not me," benRabi said.

"What about people?" Amy asked.

"Aren't women people?" Mouse countered.

She shook her head. She was a Starfisher, and Starfishers could not understand. Even Archaicism was just a hobby for them. Landsmen plunged themselves into things because they did not want to get involved with people. People hurt. The growing closeness between Mouse and benRabi, and the apparent friendships that had taken shape among the other foreigners, had confused Amy. She did not recognize their lack of temporal depth.

A critical difference between Confederation and Starfisher relationships was that of durational expectancy. The idea of a close relationship that could be severed quickly, painlessly, as easily as it had been formed, would not occur to a Starfisher. But they lived in a closed, static culture where a severely limited number of people passed through their lives. Friendships were expected to last a lifetime.

BenRabi was leery of the morrow. The isolation of the landsmen, far out in a remote residential cube, had minimized cultural friction during the week. But Kindervoort, for whom the outsiders had become a pet project, planned to make recreation day a gigantic college smoker, with floods of Seiners being exposed to landside ways.

Still trying to gentle everyone in, Moyshe supposed. Kindervoort was a rather thoughtful, admirable cop. He might get to like the man yet.