Price of Ransom Read online

  “We be putting you in a van, min,” Paisley whispered.

  The stretcher was lifted and rocked as they set it on a level surface. Lily could only see the pale sheet. A motor, already humming, rose in volume and the van moved. Lily began to lift her manacled wrists, to pull the sheet down. A hand stayed her.

  “Best to keep it up, Captain,” said Rainbow in a low voice. “We still mun get you onto ya ship. It be ya best as well not to talk, I reckon.”

  Lily nodded and kept silent. The van motored along. She could hear the sounds of other people, shifting, asking a question; one moaned. A child’s voice asked plaintively for its mother. Bach had stopped singing.

  After a bit, the van came to a halt. Shoes scraped as a few people—presumably Rainbow and Paisley and the other mobile ones—climbed out around her. Then her stretcher was lifted and she was carried again.

  They paused.

  “Chaim Sovvanna. Ten forty-eight. Severe trauma to the head,” said Yehoshua as if reading off a list.

  “Check,” said a second male voice. It sounded familiar.

  They carried her on. She felt the subtle change of pressure as they went through the link bubble.

  “Engineering,” she said quietly.

  A few minutes later they set her on the floor and pulled back the sheet. Jenny, Paisley, and Rainbow stared at her, their faces ecstatic.

  Lily rolled up to sit. “Thank the Void,” she said. “Good work. Bach, get these things off me.”

  Bach snaked out an appendage and began at her ankles, singing all the while:

  Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben

  Vor des Höchsten Gnadenthron!

  “Fall down with thanks, fall down with praise

  before the mercy seat of the Most High”

  “Bach got the dock unlocked back in Hospital, didn’t he?” Lily asked. “And you coordinated it with the je’jiri.”

  “The who?” Jenny asked. “Oh, them. Yes. I guess all this time Hawk was trying to look like them. I can’t imagine why. They give me the creeps.”

  The last of the manacles fell away. Lily stood up, carefully, rubbing her arms and stretching her legs. “What’s Yehoshua doing?”

  “Checking off the manifest. You were in the last group. Then he’ll close the berth and we leave.”

  “Did the je’jiri family get on board yet?”

  “Get on board!” Jenny paused. Her puzzlement faded abruptly as enlightenment dawned. “That’s what she meant. You’re taking them on board as crew?”

  “We’ll discuss it later. Come on. If Windsor was alerted to my escape, we’ll need to get secured and locked down quickly.” She turned to find Blue gaping at her from where he stood by the main engineering console. “We’ll want engines within the hour.”

  “Yes, Captain.” His reply was brisk. “Paisley, get over here and run the checkout.”

  Paisley cast a last, elated glance at her captain and then returned to her duties. Bach and Jenny and Rainbow followed Lily out of Engineering and down the blessedly familiar corridor of the Forlorn Hope to the main berth access.

  It was empty. They passed through the link bubble, Jenny and Rainbow in front now, and paused to stare down the short tunnel. Yehoshua stood talking, or arguing, with Deucalion. He looked impatient. Beyond him, the van had gone, already returned to the hospital for its next task. But clustered just beyond the two men stood a group of je’jiri. The very alienness of their presence was disconcerting. All of them wore packs of varying sizes of their backs, even the small children.

  Yehoshua glanced down the tunnel. Saw Lily. And moved so that Deucalion had to step back, and in the space that created, the entire je’jiri family quickly filed past him into the tunnel.

  As they approached, Lily gave a sharp nod to Rainbow. “Show them to Engineering for now,” she ordered. “Once we’re clear, we can decide about their living quarters.” She met the Dai’s bow as that female halted and inclined her head, acknowledging Lily’s presence.

  “Captain.” Her tone was respectful.

  “Min Rainbow will show you to a place. Wait there, and then we will find you quarters.”

  The Dai nodded and spoke a few words in a smooth, alien language to her people.

  Lily counted while she spoke. Ten adults—after what she had seen on the Sans Merci, and learned from La Belle herself, she guessed five of each sex: mated pairs. And five younger ones: one a babe in arms, three older, and one who was almost of adult height yet who had an indefinable air of incompleteness.

  It was staring at Jenny, an uncomfortable intensity in its gaze. As Lily watched, it abruptly transferred its gaze to her.

  His gaze. The way he stared at her, it was obvious it was a male—young, not quite an adult, but quite male. Interested in her. Desiring her. She felt it like a wave of heat. He had a high-boned face, light blue hair that shaded the startling green of his eyes—and he suddenly reminded her of Kyosti. She could see a resemblance, felt herself respond, felt the same passion in her for him that she felt for Kyosti—

  She blushed and consciously, with effort, broke off his gaze. That was when she realized that two of the adult je’jiri were restraining him bodily, one holding onto each arm. Was this an adolescent je’jiri?

  “You can’t take them on board without proper clearance,” said a voice, close—too close.

  “Get on board,” said Lily. The Dai, heeding the urgency in her tone, herded her family past. Rainbow led them into the link bubble.

  Yehoshua hurried up, trying to ignore a righteous Deucalion, who dogged his trail.

  “It is imperative with a family of je’jiri that all obligations are being met in full. Given the nature of the risks involved in hiring them, it would be irresponsible for any Concord representative not to insist that you”—Deucalion halted in surprise, seeing Lily, and narrowed his eyes as he tried to remember her—“Didn’t we just meet?” he asked.

  “Stop them!”

  Out on the concourse, Windsor appeared with Fred and Stanford at his back, flanked by two confused-looking civilians in hospital jackets.

  Deucalion turned.

  “Retreat,” said Lily. She and Jenny and Yehoshua quickly moved back into the link bubble. “Bach, commence sealing.”

  Bach began to code into the link panel. Deucalion turned back.

  “Wait one minute,” he said, and came forward.

  “Don’t come in,” snapped Lily. “Once we lock I’m not unsealing.”

  Deucalion, either oblivious to this statement or else disbelieving it, walked into the link bubble.

  The seal slid shut behind him.

  “That man has a license for you as bounty,” Deucalion said, looking at Lily as if he could not possibly comprehend her. “It’s illegal to flee a bounty. What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking the casualties on this ship to Turfan Link,” Lily replied. “Yehoshua, get up to the bridge and start detach procedures. Jenny, put the je’jiri in one of those empty labs. We need them isolated.”

  “But Lily—Captain—all of the labs are filled with casualties.”

  “Double up the casualties somewhere else. Believe me, we’re safer if they’re isolated. I’ll explain later.”

  “All right.” Jenny sounded skeptical but she left with Yehoshua. Lily followed them out of the link bubble, Bach trailing after her.

  Deucalion kept at her heels. “But you don’t understand,” he continued. “Do I have to list how many laws you’ve just broken?”

  Behind him, the second seal slipped shut, cutting them off completely from Akan Center.

  “Feel free,” said Lily, turning to head for the bridge. “You’ll have plenty of time to give me the details because you’re not getting off until Turfan Link.”

  “You’re really prepared to go through with this?” He still sounded disbelieving. “It’s kidnapping.”

  “So be it,” sighed Lily.

  “And furthermore, as a member in good standing of the Intelligence Bureau, I have the a
uthority to arrest you. Perhaps you don’t understand how serious—Wait one minute. How do you know Adam and my father?”

  Now Lily did stop. “Adam is my half-brother. So are you. I’m Taliesin’s daughter.”

  This news so confounded Deucalion that he followed her quite meekly all the way to the bridge.

  9 Deucalion

  YEHOSHUA AND JENNY TRAILED discreetly behind the captain as she conducted min Belsonn—whom she continued to call Deucalion—on a tour of the casualties crowded aboard the Forlorn Hope.

  “The Mule can’t be serious,” said Jenny in a low voice to Yehoshua as they paused, not wanting to seem too much like a bodyguard, three meters behind Lily as she stopped to discuss the state of the injured with the physician detailed from Akan to supervise this shipload.

  “Quite serious,” replied Yehoshua. He looked at her: her doubt was beginning to dissolve in the face of the Mule’s, and his, adamancy. “I heard from the captain myself that he was only half-human. The Mule had already guessed it. How could he look so much like them if he wasn’t half one of them?”

  “He did always say,” Jenny mused, “that blue was the natural color of his hair. I thought it was just his peculiar sense of humor.”

  “Peculiar, all right,” muttered Yehoshua.

  “I still find it hard to believe,” protested Jenny stubbornly. “They’re so”—she hesitated, opening and closing her hands to make up for her lack of verbal description—“so weird. I can’t imagine sleeping with one.”

  “I don’t know. From what I saw, they might have a certain—fascination. They’re so—so visceral.” He grinned.

  Jenny shuddered. “You would consider—” She broke off. Yehoshua could not tell if she was disgusted or—was it too much to hope, so soon?—unconsciously jealous.

  “They are handsome, in a completely extraordinary way.”

  “In a completely queer way. Although I must say,” she gave Yehoshua a quick, conspiratorial grin, “Hawk had his own unique charm. I might have—ah—tried him myself if it wasn’t for Lily.”

  For some reason this confession soured the entire conversation for Yehoshua. He managed to return her smile, but only because his urge to scowl would certainly cast him in an unfavorable light.

  “Yehoshua.” To his relief, the captain had turned and was beckoning to him. He walked over to her. “What happened to the six patients we had in Medical who were still in coma? Dr. Bisayan says that Medical has only Akan casualties in it, and that Flower said she was completely free to help him.”

  “Ah,” said Yehoshua, feeling uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the captain, the doctor, and the suspicious gaze of Deucalion, who had already made a bad impression on him by being overly officious. “I took the liberty of transferring those patients to Diomede’s hospital. Stationmaster—Diomede Coordinator Scallop assured me that they would be well cared for.”

  “And we currently have no physician on board,” agreed Lily. She nodded. “Good. They’ll get better care there, and if any of them do recover, both Scallop and Thaelisha can explain their situation to them. At least they’re as close to Reft space as they can be.”

  “And alive,” said Yehoshua.

  Deucalion shook his head. “Medical care is that backward in this Reft space? I can see a full report at Concord will be necessary. There is no reason that a thorough educational program and exchange can’t be worked out to upgrade the current state of medicine there. People shouldn’t have to live that way.”

  Dr. Bisayan was shaking his head and clicking his tongue in agreement.

  Lily looked at Yehoshua and pursed her lips slightly, hiding a smile. Yehoshua kept his face carefully neutral. “Well, Deucalion,” said Lily heartily. “We’ll have to ask that you lead the expedition. I’d love to go myself, just to introduce you personally to the current head of the government.”

  “You have a single person heading your government?” Deucalion asked, looking shocked.

  “In any case, Dr. Bisayan,” said Lily, neatly sidestepping this outraged question by returning her attention to the physician, “there should be no problem with min Flower assisting you as much as you need.”

  “Thank the Mother. No Center is staffed to handle a disaster of this magnitude. And we have to send one physician on each ship. As you know, most of the other people I have are volunteers who had little more than the usual first-aid training. If that physician hadn’t turned up fortuitously, not more than four hours after the main explosion—but he did. He pitched right in without even an invitation, and we were able to send him off with the first casualty ship to Turfan.”

  “Yes, but you have such a fine medical system here,” said Yehoshua, unable to resist throwing this barb in Deucalion’s direction, “that surely it wouldn’t be that unlikely that a doctor might happen by, on a trip, or on a passing ship.”

  “Of course not,” answered the doctor. “But one whose specialty is emergency medicine? Trained at Columbia, of all places.” He spoke the name with respect, even awe. “Yes, he was a little strange—his manner, and that old-fashioned style of dyeing the hair blue—and Iasi wasn’t sure we ought to put him in charge, but he was clearly competent at medicine whatever his other peculiarities, so what choice did we have?”

  “Blue hair?” Lily demanded.

  Bisayan shrugged apologetically. “It was really a Terran style that died a natural death. Those of us bred in the outer reaches, who see je’jiri more frequently, are less likely to think it a lark to imitate them.”

  “A lark?” Yehoshua asked under his breath.

  “But you say that he went on the first casualty ship sent to Turfan Link?” Lily asked, hounding this point tenaciously.

  Bisayan nodded.

  “How long ago did that ship leave? Before us, that is?”

  Bisayan waved a hand, unsure. “You must understand that standing here talking to you is probably the longest break I’ve had since the explosion. I simply don’t know.”

  “About a day and a half before us,” said Deucalion to Lily. “Why are you so interested, Captain?”

  “And we’re halfway to Turfan now, is that right, Yehoshua?” she asked, ignoring Deucalion.

  “Three windows out from Akan, three in to Turfan Link, by our charts.”

  “Except we’re going rather slower because you only have one pilot and one nav officer,” Deucalion pointed out, forcibly reentering himself in the discussion.

  Lily regarded him for a long moment with a measuring frown.

  “Captain,” said Bisayan tentatively. “If I may get back to my duties?”

  “Of course.” She said it absently, but the doctor nodded and hurried off. “Deucalion.” She said his name as if she had just at that moment come to some conclusion about him. “As your half-sister, I feel I can trust to blood ties to ensure your support. You know what business our father was in.”

  Deucalion looked torn between pride and shame. “Yes. He was one of the saboteurs.”

  “Have you ever heard of a saboteur named Hawk?”

  “The Hawk?” Deucalion’s eyes widened, giving him a surprisingly childlike look of wonder. “The one who saved Father’s life after they’d blown Ogasawara Crossroads? He operated on him with only a laser pistol, a Swiss army knife, and a—”

  “—six-year-old Kapellan girl to help him. Yes. That Hawk.”

  “Can’t be.” His eyes narrowed, considering new information. “He’s in Concord prison. He was arrested twenty, thirty years ago.”

  “He’s not there anymore,” said Lily.

  “How would you know?”

  “He was traveling with us.”

  Deucalion regarded her thoughtfully. “Oh, he was, was he? I’m going to tell you a little classified information. He wasn’t actually in Concord prison. He was in the maximum security psychiatric ward. What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Void help us,” Yehoshua breathed. “The psychiatric ward.”

  “That I think he may be the physician who s
howed up at Akan,” said Lily. “We need to find him and get him back on board this ship.”

  “How did he get out?” Deucalion demanded.

  “He took our recce boat at Diomede—”

  “I mean, from Concord prison. There’s never been an escape from that prison. And it was built sixty years ago.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I suggest you find out. I’ll have to check the records. If I am given permission to disembark at Turfan Link, Captain.”

  “Oh, let’s not stand on ceremony, brother,” said Lily, not a little caustically. “Call me Lily. Adam does.”

  For an instant Deucalion looked taken aback at this reference to his twin. “Lily,” he said. To Yehoshua’s amusement, the informality seemed to make him uncomfortable. “From what I remember—and I may be mistaken—”

  “Surely not,” murmured Yehoshua under his breath.

  “—and he may have been rehabilitated since he was institutionalized, but Hawk—the Hawk—was labeled dangerously unstable, and I believe that he had actually committed several murders when he was an adolescent. Some social psychiatrist got him off—they always do—and he was rather pushed into the saboteur network once his aptitude for medicine had shown up. They needed a certain kind of people, you understand.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him.” Lily looked displeased, and not a little angry, but Deucalion clearly did not know her well enough to attempt to soothe her.

  “Understandably, with my background,” said Deucalion primly, “and raised in the thick of it, as I’m afraid I must admit I was—neither Mother nor Father seeing anything wrong with such an irregular life for a child, and Adam certainly never minded it—I’ve had to arm myself with knowledge to protect myself from—” He halted, looking abashed. “I even slip into primitive military terms, as you see.” Recovering himself, he assumed a more comfortable stance; that of someone about to give a lecture. “Once the Akan relief is settled, you must let me handle this business. You don’t want someone like that aboard this ship.”