Price of Ransom Read online

  “Well,” replied Lily, a little overwhelmed by this recital, “I know he’s invaluable. Hindu. India. Sari. Do these words mean anything to you? She also had a red dot in the middle of her forehead. I remember that.”

  For a moment Deucalion looked taken aback. “Red dot? Wait a minute. The woman Maria. There is a woman—Maria Rashmi Leung. I only know her in passing. By repute, she’s a bit of a reactionary. That’s why she adopted the old style native costume. I don’t know why she would have been on an expedition like that. But she is in Yevgeny’s division.”

  “Who’s Yevgeny?”

  “The man who signed your order.”

  “What division is he in?”

  Deucalion hesitated visibly before he answered. “He’s head of Rehabilitation. But he’s also on the council,” he added, as if that mitigated the other duty, “and he served a term in Parliament. But if Maria Leung was in Reft space, then you must have done something there—”

  “Deucalion. As far as I could tell in the brief interview I had with her and her companions, the only crime I was being accused of was that of association. Which as far as I know has never been a crime in Reft space. First with our father. And then with Hawk, when he left them to come with us.”

  “Left them? That must be it. Even if he had been rehabilitated, he would have been on some kind of parole. Which he then violated, and you abetted. Why did he go with you, anyway?”

  Lily looked away from him, glad that the dim light hid her flush. “Did it ever occur to you that the League’s justice might not have seemed so merciful to someone like him? They had him in solitary confinement. In sensory deprivation.”

  “Surely not—” He looked righteously shocked.

  “Surely, yes. And to Hawk—”

  “But Lily,” Deucalion said, angry now, “if it’s true that he’s—well, it was never spoken about aloud, but certainly I heard Mother mention it once—that he was one of those rare, rare fluke half-breeds—half je’jiri.” He halted, looking stricken. “But perhaps you didn’t know.”

  “I knew,” she replied, grim.

  “Well, then, it would have been not just cruel but inhuman to subject him to sensory deprivation. Not that it isn’t in any case, but with his peculiar melding of characteristics …” He shook his head. “Who could have ordered such a thing?” Subsiding into silence, he mulled over this question until a new thought came abruptly to him, altering his very posture. “Lily! Since you’ve now reviewed the obligations attendant on human-je’jiri relations, you must understand the complications inherent in dealing with someone of Hawk’s background. If we do find him—”

  “When.”

  “—when we do find him, you might want to reconsider keeping him on board this ship.”

  Lily sighed. “It’s too late. Like Bach, he’s already bonded.”

  “Already bonded! In Reft space, where no one had any inkling what they were dealing with?”

  She nodded.

  “With whom—” he halted. Read her posture and what he could make out of her expression. Jumped to his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me? This changes everything! Of course, there can be no question about separating him from you once he’s found.”

  “Then help me get Windsor off this ship.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Let me rephrase the question. If I take steps to remove him and his companions without violence, will you attempt to stop me?”

  Frowning, Deucalion paced to the far wall and back again before he answered. “It is my duty as a member of the Bureau—as a citizen of the League—to abide by the law.”

  “Yes,” Lily interrupted, “but will you actively try to hinder me? I won’t have that man on this ship.”

  “You wouldn’t go with him on to Concord and trust myself and your crew to search for—No, I suppose not.”

  “It’s not a matter of trust, although I certainly have no reason to trust Windsor. But I have to be there when we find Hawk.”

  “I still don’t understand what happened to him. If he had mated you, he would never have left. They don’t do that.”

  Now it was Lily’s silence that damped the exchange. The air itself, in the room, seemed expectant and hushed. “Sit down,” she said softly, at last. “Let me tell you.”

  When she had finished her abbreviated recital, he regarded her not, to her surprise, with horror, but with compassion. “In other words, he thinks you’re dead and has suffered a mental breakdown as a result.”

  She did not reply.

  Finally, he rose. “I trust,” he said slowly, “that you understand that for the rest of the trip to Turfan Link I will be completely taken up with the casualties and the medical team. Doubtless I won’t see you at all until we reach there.”

  “I understand,” she replied.

  “Very well. Can you let me out?”

  She palmed the com-console and asked Jenny to give her the all clear. Once given, she punched in her code and, the door slipping aside, Deucalion left. Lily caught a glimpse of Jenny and six Ridanis, all armed and stationed at strategic locations around the outer room. It was as dimly lit as the inner suite, fading the Ridani’s colorful tattoos to indiscriminate shades of gray. Then the door slipped shut again, leaving her alone.

  She laid down flat on the bed, cradling her head in her cupped hands, her ankles crossed, and stared at the ceiling. It was almost lost in gloom. She brooded over the minute textures that gave shading to its contours, almost like a faint echo of a topographical map. The dimness of the room shadowed her thoughts. How long she lay, brooding, she did not know. Bach sang softly at the foot of her bed:

  Zwar ist solche Herzensstube

  Wohl kein schöner Fürstensall,

  Sondern eine finstre Grube;

  Doch, sobald dein Gnadenstrahl

  In denselben nur wird blinken

  Wird es voller Sonnen dünken.

  “A heart’s chamber such as this

  is certainly no finely appointed hall of princes

  a dark pit, rather;

  yet, no sooner shall Thy favor’s beam

  but gleam within there,

  than it will be seen to be filled with light.”

  They went through.

  She saw musical notation, weaving in and out on itself, now reversing itself, now symmetrical—quaerendo invenietis

  And came out.

  Bach was still singing, but it was music that she did not recognize. She continued to stare at the ceiling, but although no seeming time had elapsed the ceiling’s textures now seemed to have become a puzzle reflecting Bach’s music.

  “Bach,” she said. “What is inside a window?”

  He incorporated his answer into his music with extraordinary felicity, so that there was no lapse in its flow. An infinite stream.

  “But how do you get there?”

  You will find it by seeking.

  “You will find it by seeking,” she echoed, the rhythm of her words slipping unconsciously into the same cadence as Bach, and then she whistled it several times, careful to blend it with the robot’s music. She gave up when he began elaborating impossibly complex variations on the theme. But while he continued, she stood up and in the space between the bed and the wall—vast enough by the usual standards of cramped merchantmen in Reft space—did kata.

  Started with the first one she had ever learned, “First Cause,” going through it again and again, meditating on each variation the slightest reangling of her fingers made in the form as an entirety. Went on to “Peaceful Mind” until she had exhausted it as well—except that there was an infinity of variations within each move, each gesture, that could never be exhausted.

  After a while, she had to conserve her energy by going more slowly again, but this added a new element, an echoing whole-note counterpoint to the quicker and strong pace of full-speed. When she began to get tired, her fatigue added still another level of contrast. She stepped up the pace again, moving on to a higher kata, and a yet higher one. She had long
since lost track of the time.

  They went through.

  The fortress. It is bounded on four sides, each side only as strong as your own strength, but always as weak as your own weakness.

  She held to the image.

  She twisted her left hand.

  And came out.

  The few centimeters she had shifted her left hand was virtually insignificant—unmeasurable—by objective standards, but for a long moment she simply stared at her hand, astonished. She was damp with sweat; a salty bead of liquid coalesced on her lips, so that she became aware that she was thirsty. But Bach was singing again, so she went on.

  “To Penetrate a Fortress.” “To Look at the Sky.” “Flying Swallow.” “Half Moon.” “Ten Hands.”

  Hours could well have gone by. Thirst burned the back of her throat; fatigue pulled against each muscle, each strike, each block, each slow elaboration that transformed into a quick thrust. Bach’s ceaseless accompaniment seemed so integral to what she was doing, balancing each sequence, that without thinking it consciously she knew she could not be so deeply focused if he was not with her.

  “Crane on a Rock.” Balanced with perfect stability on one leg; poised as on the axis of the universe.

  They went through.

  Something about the walls had changed. They held texture not just in space but in time. She could see a pattern, a long fugue of melody out of the past, across to the present, into the future.

  Experimentally, holding that vision of the walls, she lowered her right leg. It was possible to stand, although the floor had no complete material substance as she knew it.

  And then she realized there was someone else in the room.

  First, briefly, she knew it was Kyosti, but his presence was an echo, a faint trace—like a scrap of phrase of an earlier melody bound into a new theme. She turned, and saw the other woman.

  She seemed somehow familiar to Lily: copper haired but with a reddish-toned complexion and high, square cheekbones—proud and courageous and cynical. The woman turned her head, a movement both impossibly slow and fast, without being measurable as either. And saw Lily.

  Green eyes. The recollection of Master Heredes’s eyes, with that same unusual and unusually vital shade of iris—Heredes, Gwyn, Taliesin: his names began to tumble and weave back in among themselves, like Bach’s counterpoint, until they formed a seamless whole—the recollection jolted her. Just as the woman stepped forward and seemed to speak—

  They came out.

  Lily collapsed onto her knees at the foot of the bed, her breath ragged. Her hands were dry. She got caught in a fit of trembling, just sat there and shook, exhausted and exhilarated and terrified all at the same time. Bach abandoned his music and drifted over to nudge against her, singing a soft aria.

  Schlafe, mein Liebster, geniesse der Ruh

  Wache nach diesem vor alter Gedeihen!

  Labe die Brust,

  Empfinde die Lust,

  Wo wir unser Herz erfreuen!

  “Sleep, my Dearest, enjoy Thy rest,

  from henceforth watch over the well being of all.

  Refresh Thy breast,

  experience the joy,

  there where we gladden our hearts.”

  She curled up on the floor and fell asleep.

  The chime of the com woke her.

  “Captain Ransome,” said Windsor, his voice a little fuzzy over the com. “Three windows to Turfan. Please don’t be stubborn. Fred and Stanford have things well in hand at com-tac, so don’t bother to try to storm them there. Your bridge crew is remaining polite, but still—numbers aren’t everything. Just surrender into my custody and we won’t have any trouble.” The com clicked over, crackling expectantly.

  Lily did not bother to answer. “Persistent bastard,” she muttered to herself as she went into the cubicle to wash up and drink. She changed into a fresh tunic, the stiffest, heaviest one she possessed. Then she went back to the space between the bed and the door, whistled a few instructions to Bach, and started kata again.

  Now she could focus her mind quickly and sharply on her center, could bring herself back with the accompaniment of Bach to the clean detachment of her previous meditation. Hunger and a low edge of thirst worked for her as well.

  “To Penetrate a Fortress.” “Jion.” “Ten No Kata.” “Crane on a Rock.”

  They went through.

  Time unfolds along an infinite stream, layered back in on itself. Her left hand twisted; she lowered her right leg—but she had not moved at all. What she had done before was still present. The copper-haired woman turned to speak, but Lily lost track of her as she caught—not a glimpse, but the presence, of Kyosti in the room with her. She felt for a moment that he registered her, took her in, but any other communication vanished as swiftly as the echoing shadow of her previous movements.

  She took one step forward. A second. The door receded, as if space, too, had become infinite and she could never reach it, only see its unfolded textures.

  Bach, she said.

  And that was the strangest thing of all. The contrapuntal music he sang, a continuous interweaving of voices, was the only thing that seemed to her to possess stability, as if it so perfectly reflected the stream itself.

  We follow you, Bach replied.

  Out of the infinity of textures of the door, she chose the one that seemed most solid to her, concentrated on it without losing the shadings of the rest. Walked to it and pressing her hand to the panel, found that it still acted to open: the clearest gesture she had seen, as if it had few reflections or echoing voices from other windows.

  In the outer room Jenny and the Ridani guards had an almost gossamer quality, as if they scarcely existed. The copper-haired woman stared up at Lily from the couch. She seemed unaware of any presence but her own.

  Lily wove her way through the crowd, careful not to touch them, afraid of what they might feel like or what dream her touch might give them. They faded out and yet again gained solidity even as she passed. Their stillness seemed ominous to her, not even for their sake, but for her own, because the texture of their being, seeming so light and transitory, made her begin to fear returning to their state.

  Each step she took, through the room, out into the corridor and along to the bridge, trailed repercussions in time behind her, as if her presence here inside a window was now imprinted forever, another countermelody weaving in to the whole, necessary, unique, and yet utterly bound into the others.

  Came out onto the bridge.

  Someone else sat in the captain’s chair. More than one occupant sat in each chair at each console, but their substance altered as she gazed: the wispy figures of her crew and the textured, multifaceted forms of unfamiliar faces. The captain turned.

  It was the copper-haired woman, and that she was the captain was without question. She began to speak, but Lily had already discerned the shade of Windsor, seated with a strange man—coexistent and yet separate—at the com-console.

  Bach, she said, when we come out, stun him.

  In triple canon, in six parts, he replied, and drifted across the vast and tiny space of the bridge to hover at Windsor’s back, never ceasing from his music.

  And she waited.

  But the stream stretched on. The countersubject did not end. The copper-haired woman rose and walked to each station in turn. The walls held their texture of infinite layers. The longer Lily stared the deeper her comprehension of their layers, until she caught herself lost in contemplation of their infinite variety, as if they represented in another form the infinite variety of kata, each one done again and again, always the same and yet never the same.

  There was no end to it—no way to escape. She could no longer conceive of the wall as a single entity, flat, without any dimension but that of gross matter. The copper-haired woman returned to the captains chair and spoke, but to her crew—and Lily knew finally who they were:

  The Forlorn Hope’s previous crew, caught somehow like her inside a window. Caught forever, and yet f
or no time at all. As she was. Trapped, and unable to get out.

  Bach, she cried. Stop singing.

  Bach ceased in the middle of the fugue.

  12 The Hounds Catch the Scent

  AND CAME OUT.

  There was a flash of light. Windsor slumped in his chair. The gun looped at his shoulder clattered to the floor.

  “Lily!”

  “Captain!”

  The exclamations came all at once. She slumped down against the back of the captain’s chair, unable to sustain her own weight. Someone took hold of her and pulled her up.

  “Captain!” His voice sounded flat, one-dimensional. “How the Hells did you get here?”

  “I’m never doing that again,” she said. “Never.” She tried to balance on her feet, but let the man continue to hold her up. “Get Windsor to my cabin.” Each word was an effort. “Fleet Brother to comp on bridge. Lock yourselves in here. No females. Now.” And laughed a little, wondering if “now” meant anything.

  “Trey, call Nguyen up to replace you. Then get the captain back to her cabin. Mule, call the je’jiri quarters. I’ll carry Windsor. Move it.”

  Somehow Lily was transferred to another set of strong arms and helped back to her cabin. A dark woman came forward immediately. After a moment Lily recognized her as Jenny.

  “Lily!” Jenny exclaimed.

  The door opened again. “Yehoshua, what in Hells—”

  “Don’t ask me,” he said brusquely.

  “Inner room,” Lily gasped, pulling herself that way as well. “Put him in—” She began to find a form and content for words. “Put him in the inner room, with me. Search him. Tie him up. Jenny.” Looking up, she met Jenny’s gaze and found that she could actually register her expression. “Keep guards set up in here.” But the outpouring of words confused her, and she let Trey help her into the inner room and sit her on the bed. Watched as Yehoshua dumped Windsor on the floor and Jenny tied him up as securely as only a former Immortal could. Bach floated in and hovered protectively beside her.