Probability Space (17 page)

“Are you sure you can still ride a bicycle?” Marbet had asked him the night before, lying wrapped in each other’s arms in their hut.

“Isn’t it supposed to be something you don’t forget?”

“That’s what they say.”

He’d chuckled. “You can’t ride a bike, can you? You never learned.”

“No. I never did. God, it’s dark here. I’m used to Luna City; we never go completely black. And Earth. I’ve only lived where there’s city lighting.”

Kaufman had seen darkness this deep, in combat situations. He preferred not to talk to Marbet about those. And he welcomed the impenetrable blackness for another reason. Sometimes it seemed that Marbet actually read his mind, so good was she at interpreting his tiniest body gesture or tone of voice. In the blackness, silently making love, she could detect neither. Try as he would—and he had tried hard—Kaufman had been unable to keep Magdalena out of his mind while he caressed Marbet.

Now he checked his arms and mounted his bicycle. Calin, too, was armed, with tanglefoam and a high-powered laser gun. Ann didn’t know about the latter; she wouldn’t have approved. But Kaufman was not going into combat—if you could dignify spear-throwing with that word—with a lieutenant armed only with tanglefoam. Tanglefoam range was far less than spear range. And Calin was the steadiest and calmest native he’d met on this planet. Despite Calin’s speaking no English and Kaufman no World, Calin had easily mastered the laser settings during the secret training session Kaufman had given him yesterday. Kaufman, an experienced judge of soldiers, trusted him.

Calin held Enli’s hands against his stomach for a long moment, then released her and got onto his own bicycle. Kaufman kissed Marbet and they set off for Gofkit Tramloe, leaving behind them a predawn village already frenzied with preparation for the flower ceremony. Food smells drifted after them on the air. People shouted; above the general noise Kaufman could hear Essa’s excited, irritating laugh. Dieter had already left for Gofkit Mersoe, farther away.

It was obvious that the road between villages was little used. Unpaved, it had apparently once been so traveled that the dirt became hard-packed. Now weeds poked through the ground, in places so thick that he and Calin had to dismount and walk their bicycles. The encroaching underbrush would make good cover for attackers. Kaufman stayed alert, glancing every few seconds at his heat sensors, but the only thing they registered, or that Kaufman saw, were the ubiquitous rabbit-analogues called frebs.

What he mostly saw were flowers. All over again Kaufman was astonished at the floral life of World. No one tended these roadside beds anymore, yet they burst with the color and scent of hundreds of species of spectacular flowers. Beyond the roadside beds, wildflowers bloomed in almost equal profusion. If the marauders at Voratur’s old compound did indeed succeed in introducing war to this part of the planet, it would be a war fought among endless gardens. Blood on the allebenirib.

It would be so easy to take out the entire compound. One burst of proton beam. And, Kaufman admitted to himself, it would make him feel less guilty. But he would abide by Ann’s wishes. She was going to live here; he was not. Thank God.

They reached Gofkit Tramloe without incident. There Calin exchanged long, fulsome speeches, accompanied by flowers, with the seven natives journeying to Gofkit Shamloe. Kaufman hung back, knowing that these people were not used to humans; even Calin seemed foreign to them since the cessation of shared reality. Children darted peeping glances at the strangers from behind bushes and walls. This town, too, had a stockade.

The journey back was much slower, and on foot. By prearrangement, Kaufman and Calin left their bicycles at Gofkit Tramloe. Two of the visitors were old. One, in fact, was a shriveled crone with bright black eyes who looked older than rocks, apparently a very honored state. (“They are bringing a grandmother’s mother!” Enli had exclaimed excitedly, which meant nothing to Kaufman.) She rode in a crude cart pulled by two strong young men, serene and majestic among the flowers, food, bottles, and presents being sent by the village. Kaufman hoped she wouldn’t die of old age on the way.

He put Calin at the front of the procession and himself at the rear. If bandits were going to attack, it would be on the way back: more loot, more slaves. The natives all sang, making more noise than Kaufman would have liked (rule out detecting an enemy by sound). But no one attacked. They saw no one until they were in sight of Gofkit Shamloe, when the official delegation paraded out to meet the visitors.

Instantly Kaufman knew that something was wrong.

Ann was among the greeters. Kaufman could not read alien expressions very well, but Ann’s was clearly disturbed. Dieter? Kaufman ran over his options for a hostage situation within the Voratur compound. Although it was difficult to see how Dieter’s group could have been captured. Dieter was as well armed as Kaufman.

“It’s Essa,” Ann whispered to him when the procession had wound into the village. “She’s missing!”

“Doesn’t she do that periodically?” Kaufman asked.

“She wouldn’t have done it this morning. She wouldn’t have missed this for anything, it’s the most excitement we’ve had in a year.”

“What do you want me to do?” Kaufman said, hiding his irritation.

“I don’t know. Enli’s very upset. She—”

“Has anybody looked for Magdalena? Essa seems fascinated by her. Maybe she’s with Magdalena.”

“Lyle, Magdalena’s at the ceremony. Everybody is, except Essa. Look, here comes Dieter.”

A dust cloud floated on the horizon in the direction of Gofkit Mersoe. Ann and Kaufman brought up the rear of the first procession, which was supposed to have entered the village green and have completed all its speeches before the second procession arrived. It wasn’t dissimilar, Kaufman thought, to an admiral’s inspection.

Inside the stockade, the impression was even stronger. The communal green had been transformed. Pillows and low tables were scattered thickly over the ground. Every hut was hung with flowers. Plates mounded with food almost hid a long trestle table built while Kaufman had been gone. The Gofkit Shamloe villagers, dressed in carefully preserved festival clothing from before the Change, sat in rows on fallen logs at the edge of the green, the children preternaturally quiet and stiff. Gofkit Shamloe’s old piper, Solor Pek Ramul, played softly.

Kaufman caught sight of both Marbet and Magdalena, standing together near the back of the seated villagers. Marbet, very short, wore a gown Kaufman had seen before, a modest drift of pale green fabric so light that the whole thing rolled up smaller than his fist and weighed a mere three ounces. She looked beautiful. Magdalena looked … Why the hell would a woman in exile, or whatever she was supposed to be, travel with a dress like that? And did she wear it at Enli’s child’s ceremony out of respect or mockery?

The dress was at least part holo, part heavy fabric in fantastic streaks of color that kept subtly changing as the holo played over the cloth. It was studded with jewels that may or may not have been real, or holo, or something else. The bodice, cut very low, dung to Magdalena’s breasts and waist before flaring into a stiff long skirt. She had pulled her hair into shining loops on the top of her head, strung with more jewels. Her lips and eyelids were gold. She held herself proudly, and next to her Marbet, a foot shorter, suddenly looked insignificant. Kaufman looked away.

Enli and Calin, parents of the honored child, were making long speeches to the grandmother’s mother, still in her overladen cart. Kaufman resigned himself to several hours of singing, flowers, and talk in a language he didn’t understand. Ann’s comlink shrilled, startling them both.

“What … Dieter knows better than to call now, unless something’s wrong,” Ann said. She moved behind Kaufman’s bulk, pulled out her comlink, and switched the message from stored to live. It wasn’t Dieter.

“—have me oh come quick they’ll hurt me again come—” The link went dead. Essa.

Kaufman glanced around. Incredibly, no one else had heard. He damped a hand on Ann’s wrist and drew her back between two huts until he could pull her behind a wall.

“Is there a location indicator on Essa’s comlink?”

“Yes. She’s in Voratur’s compound. Oh, Lyle!”

Kaufman thought rapidly. “I need Dieter, and two Worlders. Young, calm men who can take orders. Calin can protect Gofkit Shamloe, I’ll give him more arms. But post lookouts, because Essa will have told them what’s going on here today. She won’t have been able to help herself. And I want Magdalena’s skimmer. You get Dieter aside as soon as he gets here and tell him to unobtrusively meet me at the skimmer. I’m going to circle around the back of the huts and talk to Magdalena.”

“Lyle, you and Dieter can’t go now! It’s the start of the ceremony!”

He took her hands. “Ann, the marauders want information about the villages. They may torture Essa. I think I can get in and trade for her without anyone of ours dying. But I have to go now.”

She nodded. Kaufman trusted her to find two steady young alien males and to inform Dieter. Kaufman slipped around the back of the huts, along the slope to the river bank. He wasn’t really surprised when Magdalena met him halfway; she would have seen Ann reach for her comlink and then Ann and Kaufman withdraw. There wasn’t much Magdalena missed.

She looked wildly incongruous beside the crude wooden huts, on the rough grass-analogue, in her magnificent jeweled dress, her full breasts on display. Kaufman told her briefly what had happened. “I need your skimmer, please.”

“Only if I go with you.”

“No. This is a military action, however tiny. I don’t want to have to look out for you.”

“It’s probably going to be a trading action, after an initial scare to the natives, and you know it. I drive the skimmer or you don’t have it.”

Kaufman bit back his retort. He didn’t have time to argue. “All right. Wait at the skimmer.”

He circled back. Ann stood just beyond the stockade with two men, one young and large, one middle-aged, small, and potbellied. “This is Solin Pek Harbutin and Camifol Pek Narfitatin, Camifol is a good negotiator.”

“All right. Send Dieter to the skimmer as soon as he arrives. And you’ve got to extract Calin from the ceremony and bring him here right away.”

Ann looked appalled, but she went back into the stockade. Kaufman pulled out his laser gun and began showing the two natives how to use it. Ann had chosen well. They both looked frightened but determined, and they followed his wordless instruction closely.

When Ann reappeared with Calin, Kaufman told him how to post lookouts and repel an attack on the village, if he had to. Ann translated. From the length of her speech Kaufman suspected she was adding edits of her own, but he didn’t have time to investigate.

Magdalena had moved the skimmer closer to the village. She had changed from her gown into a gray coverall, but her hair was still in its elaborate jeweled upsweep. The two natives stayed as far away from her as the skimmer would allow. Since the skimmer sat only six, and one seat was needed to bring back Essa, Magdalena had left her two bodyguards behind. Probably she thought that Kaufman and Dieter would serve as sufficient protection. After what seemed a long wait but wasn’t, Dieter arrived.

“Lyle! What do you plan, how do we get her back?
Scheisse
, those bastards…”

Kaufman shut him up and explained. Magdalena lifted the skimmer and set off at top speed; evidently she already knew where the Voratur compound was. The two natives clutched the arms of their seats but said nothing. Brave men, Kaufman admitted. By any standard. What if he had to cooperate with totally alien allies: Fallers, for instance? He couldn’t imagine it.

“We’re here,” Magdalena said, decelerating hard. Kaufman suspected she was enjoying herself. She released the door and the four men stepped out.

Kaufman had seen action on two planets and a moon. He had served under that master strategist, Colonel Syree Johnson. He had participated in the negotiations that kept the Belt from seceding from the Solar Alliance in 2159. He had persuaded a SADA general to send the expedition to World that had dug up and decoded the Protector Artifact. Next to all that, negotiations with the marauders barely deserved the name. It took two minutes, and he could have done it alone. Kaufman was a little ashamed of his contingent preparations.

Dieter called out in World to send out the child Essa. There was no response. Kaufman used his laser full strength, wide sweep, to take off the top of the compound’s ornamental gate. Noise from inside, but no one emerged. He fired again, lower, and wood and stone came crashing down. More noise. A minute later the ruined gate was shoved open thirty centimeters and Essa was pushed through it.

She stumbled, got up, and ran wobbling toward the skimmer. Kaufman expected wounds; she had cried over the comlink
“oh come quick they’ll hurt me again come—”
It was a good sign that she could walk at all. Dieter ran forward and scooped her up, Kaufman covering him with the gun. They all climbed back into the skimmer.

Essa’s arm hung at a strange angle. Broken. Three burns blistered the skin on the same arm. Her face was swollen from crying and contorted with pain. Dieter reached into his pocket and slapped a patch on Essa’s neck. “Ann gave me painkillers. And I think I can splint this arm until we get to Ann … hold still, Essa!”

The girl had started to laugh and babble. The patch had cut in. Kaufman had seen this on the battlefield: sudden euphoria at the abrupt cessation of pain and danger. But soldiers were supposed to contain the euphoria. Essa never contained anything.

Dieter said, “She says they grabbed her before dawn, pretty dose to Gofkit Shamloe, in the cari field, and—hold still,
verdammt!
”

Kaufman said dryly, “Ask her what she was doing alone in the cari field before dawn.”

Dieter translated Essa’s reply. The tiresome girl still bounced in her seat, ignoring her broken arm now that it didn’t hurt her. “She says she wanted to try out the comlink, to see if the other eight we gave Worlders still worked. She put out an all-frequency call—you know, Lyle, that only means the frequencies we gave them originally, the comlinks were preset. Next thing she knew, she was being grabbed and carried to Voratur’s. They searched her, but she’d already—be still, Essa!”