Second Wave (18 page)

All of this took place in a moment, but she thought it must have seemed like an eternity to the man.

He sighed, a deep “aaahh,” then stood up. “Thank you kindly. Be right back.” His posture erect and his gait reasonably normal, he quickly entered an adjoining building.

“Thank you so much,” the girl who’d fetched them said. “Gramps is all we got left. I’m Moonmay Marsden and this here is my brother Percy and our cousin Fleagle. I expect Grampa was off in search of clean britches.”

“The air smells better anyhow,” Fleagle said, his tears evaporated. He playfully punched his cousin in the arm. “Mercy, Percy, even
you
smell better.”

The smith reemerged with a big grin. “I think you cured my sciatica while you were at it, young’uns. I retired about five year ago and let my son take over the business. Right away the aches and pains started, payin’ me back for all the abuse I done myself in the past. But, shoot, now I feel like I could work another twenty years—or at least long enough to teach Fleagle and Percy here the trade.”

“We were happy to help, but we need to return to our ship now, sir,” Khorii told him.

“I don’t suppose you could stay for supper? We’d be honored to have you, and Moonmay cooks as good as her mama. Fried chick—”

He started to say “chicken” but Moonmay, bearing in mind what most people now knew about the Linyaari and their vegetarian dietary needs, tugged at her grandfather’s coverall. He tilted his head so she could say something into his ear.

“Fried chickpeas. Moonmay makes the best fried chickpeas on Rushima. Mashed tubers and of course, your pick of the garden.”

“We’d love to, sir, but we have some friends to bury.”

“Me and the boys will help, then, and pay our respects,” the smith said, and all of them trooped back to the ship.

The smith and his grandsons followed Khorii and Mikaaye aboard the ship and into the cargo hold, where Hap and Jaya stood, shovels in hands, over the graves. Khorii introduced the blacksmith Marsden, Percy, and Fleagle, and, after a nod, Marsden took the shovel from Hap’s hands and Percy the one from Jaya’s, asking her if there was another for Fleagle. They wouldn’t accept any help until it was time to pull the carton coffins from the graves. The coffins had deteriorated under the soil, which was to be expected. The black body bags containing the remains were not in much better shape, which was not surprising either. There seemed to be very little left of the dead, which was probably just as well.

“They sure don’t stink much for dead folk,” Fleagle said. “Don’t weigh much neither.”

“Hush, boy,” his grandfather said. “Show some respect.”

Khorii thought that any respect the boys might have had for the dead and the process of death had probably been eroded by so much close acquaintance with it in recent months. It was actually remarkable they were as sensitive as they were under the circumstances.

They loaded the remains into the trailer of the tractor Scar drove up to the dock. Moonmay had spent her time gathering flowers. Then people walked or rode out of town to the fields, where rows of stones, boards, and crosses marked graves newly green.

Scar stopped the tractor well outside the cemetery, apologizing. “Good thing I dug some extra graves earlier on. The ground has eroded something fierce—sinkholes big enough to lose a house in.” The blacksmith’s family served as assistant pallbearers, carrying the crumbling cartons cautiously to a tarp spread over the ground. Scar pulled it aside to reveal more holes for graves. “These ought to do the job,” he said. “When there’s been one death lately, there’ve been more with it so…” He waved an arm to indicate all the extra holes.

When the bodies had been lowered into the holes, Moonmay and several other girls stepped forward with fistfuls of yellow-and-orange flowers. Moonmay handed some to Jaya, and said, “The marigolds came back real good, and Scar had seeds. They’ll prettify the graves till the grass grows back. And we’ll tend ’em with Mama’s and Daddy’s and Uncle John’s and Aunt Mai Ling’s.”

Jaya hugged her, accepted the marigolds, and tossed some on top of the cartons before the tractor filled them in again. Jaya laid a handful of the bright saffron blossoms on each grave and led the others away.

She felt certain there would be no more spectral shapes keeping her mindful of happy memories turned sad by loss.

Chapter 16

T
he brilliant thing about going straight to jail was that very few people knew Marl, or that he belonged there, if one accepted the authority of a handful of children, a one-horned alien, and a teacher pretending to be a lot better than she should be. Marl did not, of course. Once out of his cell he had no intention of returning. He had a clear idea from talking to his young jailers of where the com center was, and he headed straight for it. There was one closer to the docks as well, but that was mostly for ground-to-ship communication. The place he sought was conveniently situated on the same street as the police station. He wanted to speak with some friends on Kezdet.

He didn’t spare a glance for the plaza/cemetery on the opposite side of the street. The dead didn’t interest him, and, with his current grandiose plans, grave robbing for trinkets was far beneath him. He was not afraid of catching plague from the bodies. The Linyaari do-gooders would have made sure they were all nice and clean, according to his jailers. But it was hard, smelly work, and the population here had not been especially affluent.

The center was situated in a large dome-shaped building entered through a rotunda. It was very grand, with a mosaic ceiling in deep blue with a representation of the galaxy in gold, with the Solojo system at the center. The floor was, he presumed, an artistic topo-map of Paloduro’s surface, with Corazon enclosed in a large heart. Touching, that.

The rotunda was entirely empty. Ah yes, the kiddies would all be in bed.

Good thing he’d brushed up on his Spandard while incarcerated. The lift had a detailed list of the contents of each floor in that language.

The transmissions center was on the top floor, of course. He hied himself there forthwith and entered a room whose entire ceiling was another model of the galaxy but a less Solojo-centered one. Various reception centers on planets, moons, stations, etc. and relay activity were represented. Laser beams of various colors streaked like comets from one to another or ricocheted around a bit showing, he presumed, where transmissions were headed. As he had expected, however, most of the room was operated by computer. A lone minder sat in a semireclining position for an optimum view of the ceiling, shifting around on invisible, presumably antigrav supports, so that the bit the operator was addressing was the one directly above.

Marl started forward, his footsteps making no sound on the rubberized flooring considerately designed to lesson ambient noise in the room. The operator, who appeared to be a girl, did not hear him. Good. But out of the corners of his eyes, both to the right and the left, something made a sudden movement. Then he almost dived for the floor when another operator’s pallet sailed overhead. Where had that come from?

Standing stock-still, he darted quick glances to the right, the left, and up. No one. And the pallet was empty. Why had it moved then? Perhaps the other operator had called it or perhaps it anticipated his own need?

As to the other movements, they were probably nothing but reflections cast by the laser bolts flashing overhead.

No, truly, he and the other operator were quite alone. Good. She didn’t look at all familiar, which meant he would not look familiar to her either. He stared up at the rogue pallet as it zoomed off again. Two others did the same thing, dodging around one another when a midair crash seemed likely. This time the girl sat up, moved her hand a bit, and her pallet sank to the nearest landing pad, a wedge-shaped space with a step leading to it located beside each computer station.

“Did you do that?” the girl demanded in Spandard. She looked to be eight or nine years old but could have been as old as twelve. Marl shook his head innocently and gave her his most ingratiating smile. He could be good with kiddies when it suited him. Girlies especially, though this one was not his type. Too pudgy and spotty, and her hair was thin and stuck out in wisps where it had been splayed out behind her pallet-cradled noggin.

“No! No,” he said. That word at least worked in both languages. Fluency was not actually required though, he thought. The harmless, bewildered tourist with an emergency was more the ticket. In broken Spandard, he explained his plight. He had come to Corazon before the plague to visit relatives of his family on Kezdet. The little ones were orphaned now, but he was sure his own kindly parents, had they survived, would take them in. He had been sick himself and was barely saved by the Linyaari healers, then had dedicated himself to helping arrange things so others could manage. He hadn’t imagined that his family on Kezdet were better off and frankly, until now, had been afraid to face the fact that he, too, might be an orphan. Then he had heard that the plague hadn’t actually got a good toehold on Kezdet before the noble Linyaari came zooming to the rescue, so now he had hopes of a family reunion and could she help him at all?

He was a bit annoyed at how much longer and how many more strenuous charades it required to get his touching story across to her. You’d have thought they’d have put a brighter brat in charge of the com room at night. She kept losing track of what he was saying when another pallet lifted into the air to zoom around of its own accord, or more of those reflections darted past. Perhaps it was the dome shape that made them always seem to move at the periphery of one’s vision. He didn’t notice any of the beams reflecting directly down.

By the time he made the girl understand his request, however, she was whipping about at each little movement, totally spooked, despite what she surely must have seen as his reassuring presence. He found himself starting, too. If the child was this unnerved by the pallets and reflections, it could not be a normal occurrence. It could, however, play into his hands.

“Ought they to be doing that?” he asked in Spandard, as another pallet passed overhead. She shook her head, her eyes showing white all around the pupils.

Then, as he had hoped, she showed him, with gestures, demonstrations, and simple phrases, how the system was supposed to operate.

“A simple malfunction then?” he suggested. “¿Uh—
uno malfunctiamente tecnico? ¿Uno
glitch
electromagnetimente?
”

For a moment she looked at him like he was nuts, and he thought she didn’t understand. Then she leaned closer to him, and whispered, presumably so that all of the hardware zipping about overhead wouldn’t hear. “No,” she told him, “
fantasma.
”

“Ghosts? Get serious, lovey. No such thing. No
fantasma,
” he said.

“Sí,”
she said, gesturing rather hysterically at the flying pallets,
“Sí, sí, fantasma.”

He sighed deeply. No reasoning with someone like this. “Tell you what then, you run along and I’ll deal with them,
sí
? Uh, make
fantasma vamuso pronto.
”

She didn’t even look skeptical. He was older, after all, and male, and obviously knew what he was doing, although he was very glad she didn’t.

She jabbered something too fast for him to understand and was out of there before any dust that might have settled in her wake could do so.

Fine. Just him and the
fantasmas.
Uh
malfunctiamente tecnico.
He could deal with that. Picking up her control pad, he settled himself into the pallet and was carried toward the ceiling like a baby being delivered by a great bloody stork.

Brilliant. He homed in on Kezdet and microrouted the message to a code that landed him in the middle of a little-known area of the Nanobug Market. The shabby, slightly carnie atmosphere lent by the sights and smells of a plethora of merchandise that was secondhand at the newest actually concealed quite a sophisticated com system undetected by the Federation cops.

It would be midday on Kezdet now, and his friends would be touting their wares to the unwary or at least to those who didn’t mind the wear and tear on some items, even if they knew to beware of the condition of others. Amused with his wordplay, he thought to repeat it to his contact, but the old man wasn’t amused. “I was in the middle of a deal, boy. What the Demos do you want?”

Marl batted his lashes in a coy fashion, if not a koi fashion, since he, of course, had something fishy in mind. “Is that any way to speak to opportunity when it hails you?” he asked. “I’ve a much better deal that should interest you and your team. I have landed in a veritable pot of gold, my friend, and I wish to cut you in.”

“You’re too kind,” the other man said gruffly. “Why?”

“I find myself in need of minions and transport.”

“Sounds like a personal problem,” the man said with a snort and seemed about to switch off the com and go back to peddling Linyaari bobble-headed dollies or whatever.

“You’re right,” Marl said. “It is. That’s all right. Of course I wanted to cut my old pals in first, but if that’s how you feel, there’s plenty around here willing to retire young with a fortune, a mansion, and a harem of buxom teenaged cuties.”

The man shook his head. “I know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what is it you’re on about?”

Marl told him. Some of it he knew of course, but it was necessary to the buildup to describe all of the properties, the drugs, the riches waiting for a clever operator and his gang to collect. The key, of course, was to do it without catching the plague, but he figured he had that angle covered.

“Here’s the sweet part,” he said, dangling the best bit of bait, “I happen to know one of them rather well.” He made his relationship with Khorii sound much friendlier than it was.

“Who doesn’t? Know some of them all too well indeed. One of them made me give away most of my best stock.”

“
One
of them?”