The Baba Yaga (8 page)

He let go of her hands. “We’re not infected.”

“What? How do you know? How can you be sure? You dashed away from the base as if...” As if he had been trying to outrun a plague.

“There’s a test. A scan. I took it.”

“But I didn’t. Jenny didn’t—”

“I can tell you for certain, Maria—you and Jenny are not infected.”

She supposed she would have to trust him. “So,” she said. “Shuloma Station. What will we find when we get there?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I trust my friend, and I know that we’ll be safe. If we’re careful.”

“Then by all means let us be careful.”

He gave her a beautiful smile, and her heart warmed within her. They would be safe, she thought. Yes, she trusted him, absolutely, and so she would trust whoever he trusted. She reached out and took his hand, and they sat together, peacefully, almost as if they were at home, and it was evening, and they were enjoying the time that they were spending together before it passed.

And, not far behind them, but beyond the range of their scanners, a little ship corrected course, and began to follow them again.

I
F
W
ALKER HAD
harboured any illusions that the Expansion enjoyed total control over its citizens, a few hours in the company of Yershov on the
Baba Yaga
put that notion to rest. Administering a large empire was a difficult task, and it was much easier, on the whole, if citizens stayed put. Travel between worlds was expensive, the permits and passes needed were cumbersome, so that on the whole people tended not to bother, and enjoyed what their home worlds and immediate systems had to offer them. It made life easier all round.

But some people always manage to find a way to slip past the authorities, and Yershov, it seemed, was one of those people who had the knack. But then people did get away sometimes, Walker reflected: renegade telepaths exhausted from the strain of being used for governmental purposes; the odd libertarian who wanted to live out the fantasy of the open road... And it was easier to let these people go than try to prevent them all from leaving. They were better out of the Expansion than spreading their dissatisfaction within, infecting others with their resentment. Whether this courtesy extended to senior officials from the Bureau who, until only a few short days ago, had been privy to some of the Expansion’s most sensitive secrets was yet to be determined. But Andrei, at least, seemed to think that Yershov was up to the job.

And so it proved, incredibly. The
Baba Yaga
rose clumsily from her berth in St Martin’s Docks, lumbered halfway around Hennessy’s World at high altitude and then, when she was as far as she could be from Venta and her troublesome air traffic control, heaved herself up into orbit.

“Why is nobody stopping you?” asked Walker.

“She’s old,” said Yershov. “Nobody quite believes the ion traces she’s leaving. So they write it off as noise.” He gave a toothy smile. “Sometimes being old means you’re invisible.” So slowly, steadily, and—apparently—invisibly, the
Baba Yaga
made her way to the edge of the system. “Helps we’re going out,” Yershov said. “Early warning defence systems point outwards. Not as concerned about people escaping as they are enemies invading. Trying to get back to Hennessy’s World would be a whole different ball game. But leaving? There’s a few blind spots here and there. We’ll get to one of those, then phase.”

“How do you know Andrei Gusev?” Walker said, suddenly.

Yershov gave her a sly look. “I was wondering when you’d ask that.”

“And your answer?”

“We met during the war with the Vetch. Gusev needed the odd cargo taking from point A to point B, no questions asked. I obliged.”

Gunrunning, Walker assumed; arming the human populations of worlds overrun by Vetch invaders. A dirty job, making money from the suffering of others.

“You got a problem with that?”

“What you do in your off-hours is your own business.” Walker shifted slightly forwards in her sling to show him her handheld. “Here’s where we’re going.”

He nodded at the coordinates. “Shard’s World.” He grunted, and she watched as his gnarled hands scampered over the flight controls, and then he leaned back in his sling and fixed the flight jacks into place. “Get yourself comfortable, lady,” he said. “This might be bumpy.”

The beautiful starscape of her home system gave way to the empty grey swirl of the void. Walker closed her eyes. “Remember, Yershov,” she said, “I’m no lady.”

A
BOUT AN HOUR
later, Yershov lay snoring in his pilot’s sling, exhausted from the rigours that the phase had demanded of his shrunken old body. The three or four shots he’d drunk right after must have helped too, Walker thought. Still, it was better than having him awake and his small dark eyes following her and inching across her body, judging and appraising. In the half-light and the quiet, the
Baba Yaga
was almost peaceful. Walker felt alone for the first time in an age: without a communicator buzzing, or a colleague needing urgent answers, or Kinsella, sending her love notes... her mind inevitably turned to the inescapable fact that she was not alone. She was...

She stood up abruptly, banishing the thought and its implications. She stretched each limb carefully, then worked the muscles of her neck, trying to get sensation back into the top of her spine. Her work in recent years had kept her on Hennessy’s World, and she had forgotten how space travel constrained one’s body. It would be several days before they got to their destination in the Reach: the mining planet Shard’s World. A former asset was there, pretty much the only person Walker knew within the Reach, although it had been some years since they had met face-to-face. Still, she doubted that he would have forgotten her. You didn’t forget a brush with the Bureau, and his brush had been particularly unpleasant. A petty thief, he had fallen in with some fairly nasty gangsters whose rackets the Bureau had wanted closed down. Walker had been the one to question him, to run his undercover operation, and then to provide him with the cover identity that sent him out of the Expansion and away, they all hoped, from the reach of his former paymasters. She had heard nothing from him since she had put him on a shuttle for Shuloma Station, one of the crossing points between the Expansion and the Reach. All she knew was that he was now going by the name of Fredricks, and that he was on Shard’s World.

She punched his codes into the comm. An automated service tried to prevent her from getting through to him, until she said her name, very clearly. Then his face appeared on screen. He looked older than when she had last seen him (but then, who didn’t?), but his time away from the Expansion had clearly been good to him. He looked slick, and prosperous.

“Hello, Fredricks,” she said.

The man now known as Fredricks blanched. “
Hell’s bells, Walker. Is it really you?
”

“It’s me.”

“I didn’t think you were going to darken my days again. Where have you sprung from?
”

“Your dreams.”

“
My nightmares, more like.
” He looked at her anxiously. “
You’re not here, are you?
”

“On Shard’s World? No.”

“
Thank Christ for that.
”

“Not yet.”

He took a deep breath and ran his hand across his eyes. “
I see.
”

“I’m passing through in a few days. I won’t stay long.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “
What do you want from me, Walker?
”

“Let’s save that for when we meet.”

“
I paid my debt to you, you know. I put myself in danger for you. Cost me everything I had back in the Expansion—
”

“You seem to be doing pretty well out in the Reach.”

“
I’ve worked hard. I started with nothing, and I’ve earned everything I’ve got—
”

“I’m not coming to take any of that away from you,” she said. “I won’t take up much of your time. But I am coming. It would be a shame if a number of our old acquaintances found out your new address.”

“
An hour?
” he said. “
I think I can manage that.
”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll reach Shard’s World by the end of the week, your time. Where can I find you?”

He sent over contact details, and her expensive little handheld, still diligently working this far from Hennessy’s World, started assembling a little dossier on him.

“All right, I’ll see you soon.”

“
I’ll put the kettle on
,” he said, and cut the comm.

She let her handheld go about its business for a while, and then began to read what it had found.
Merriman Fredricks. Specialist Import Services.
She found company accounts, saw exactly how successful he had been, but she couldn’t find any specific details as to the nature of his business. Importing what, exactly? What did one import to a mining world? Flowers? She was digging for more information when she heard a rattling cough behind her.

Yershov was wide awake in his sling and staring at her glassily. She wondered how long he had been awake, and how much of that conversation he had heard. She would have preferred none at all—although it would do no harm, she thought, for Yershov to see that grown men were frightened of her.

“Shard’s World,” he said.

“That’s where we’re going. You set the course, remember?”

“I know Shard’s World.”

“You’ve been there?” She looked at him, irritated. “You didn’t mention it.”

“Long time ago. Good money, mining. Then the law changed and the union-busters came. Brought a load of slaveys with them. That was the end of that.”

He’d been lucky not to get indentured himself, Walker thought.

“I said I’d never go back to Shard’s World, not for any money.”

“We do a lot of things we said we’d never do.”

“I know,” he said, and fell asleep again.

And although she was glad of the peace, she supposed she was glad too that he’d woken up and spoken. Because now she thought she had an idea what business Fredricks was in, and how she needed to take care when visiting the world where a one-time petty thief could make a home and a fortune.

D
OCKING AT
S
HULOMA
Station posed no problems: it was the kind of place where the fewer questions were asked, the happier everyone was. Still, Kit had told Maria that they needed to pack everything, and not assume that they were coming back to the ship.

“It’s better,” he said, haltingly, “if we try to... Well, we should be discreet.”

They should cover their tracks, he meant, Maria thought, but she did not press him. He had promised her they weren’t infected—and she couldn’t believe he would take any risks with Jenny’s welfare—so why would they be chased? Who would come after them? Surely his superiors had more to worry about, given the situation on Braun’s World, than one junior officer who had gone on the run? Or perhaps the fear of infection was so great now that they would pursue people beyond reason... That was a frightening thought, as was the sight of Kit constantly looking over his shoulder.

But someone, at least, was looking after them, and Maria was glad of it, in this godforsaken place. All her preconceptions of the worlds beyond Expansion control were true: dirty, frightening, unkempt places, with an underlying sense of lawlessness. Maria was used to the brisk order of military bases: small but well-kept homes and gardens; friendly, generous people, who would help you if you were in distress. People who wouldn’t see you as an opportunity for self-advancement. She had known nothing like Shuloma Station.

The station lay on the very edge of the Reach, at the point where the rule of law imposed by the Expansion gave out, and the overlapping and contradictory jurisdictions of the many independent worlds of the Reach began. It had been a scientific research station, once upon a time, cutting-edge; where scientists who couldn’t quite get permission for their research within the Expansion had come, finding it a place where nobody really bothered to ask questions, as long as the results were good. And since even research scientists need food and entertainment, and sometimes even want to enjoy the finer things in life, and since there seemed to be a good deal of money sloshing around, the traders moved in to offer whatever was wanted. Soon the place acquired its own momentum, and the great market of Shuloma Station was born. The place now had the feel of a bazaar; it had been running for more than thirty years, and had no intention of packing up soon. There was little original scientific work conducted on Shuloma these days, but business was still booming.

Maria, clutching Jenny’s hand, stood at the intersection between two busy walkways and stared around at the booths, and the traders, and the people... and the
aliens
... Maria had never left the Expansion before. She’d seen a few pictures of non-humans—the Vetch, of course, were the staple villain of popular war vids—but nothing had prepared her for the great diversity of the universe beyond her former little world, in all its messy, stinking, oozing glory, with its tentacles and multiple eyes and excess legs and hands and fingers. She stared round until suddenly a little head came to rest exhaustedly against her. Turning to Kit, she murmured, “Jenny’s getting tired.”