A Passage of Stars Read online

  It was the same sun, but the view—so changed. There were buildings, a street clogged with traffic: pedestrians, bicycles, and motopeds, and a few trucks bearing cargo. Lily had thought Station on Unruli’s moon was crowded; it was nothing compared to this crush of humanity. It stank here, too, but it had a more fetid flavor, torn now and then with a gust of freshening wind. The buildings, towering around her, had thousands upon thousands of windows that doubled the activity. Vehicles and people and unseen machinery roared about her ears. Security personnel patrolled in marked vehicles, on motorized two-wheelers, and on foot in pairs.

  “Lily!” Heredes took her by the arm.

  She looked at him. “I see now,” she said. “And to think there’s so much land out there.”

  “Where’s Hawk?”

  Kyosti stood three meters behind her. He seemed to be staring at an invisible figure directly in front of him. Lily pushed past a clump of people, grabbed his arm.

  “Kyosti?” His eyes shifted to her and his hands clamped onto her arm. His mouth opened—no words. “Here,” said Lily briskly. “Put your arm around me. That’s right. Now let’s go.”

  Heredes came up beside her, took Kyosti’s other elbow. “This way,” he said. “Turn here.”

  They turned off the main street. Kyosti’s face lost some of its blank-eyed stare, and he abruptly disengaged his elbow from Heredes’s grasp.

  “Well, Hawk,” said Heredes, but he confined further comment to an exchange of glances with Lily. “Turn here again. And—ah, yes—Abagail Street. Twelve oh one. Twelve oh seven. Here we are.” They went in. As the doors shut behind them, the noise from the street faded and cut off. Heredes examined the directory. Kyosti withdrew his arm from Lily.

  “Floor twenty-one. We’ll take the lift.”

  They came out on floor twenty-one into a small hallway flanked with two doors. One was blank. The other bore the letters Abagail Street Academy. Jones. Haji. Ramirez. In the anteroom a young man sat behind a counter typing into a terminal. He looked up. “May I help you?”

  Heredes presented an amiable smile. “We’re here to see sensei Jones. She is expecting us.”

  “Of course,” said the young man uncertainly. “She should be in gym one.”

  “Thank you.” Heredes led them into a hallway. “Gym Four. Three. Locker room. Locker room. Quite an establishment. Puts mine to shame.” He winked at Lily. “Two. Here we are.” He pushed open double doors, Lily and Kyosti following.

  The floors were of wood. Lily noticed that first. Then the rank of mirrors along one wall. The other walls were a pale peach. Mats lay rolled up against the far wall. In the middle of the room sat a woman, cross-legged, meditating. Her head lifted at the sound of their entrance, turned. The woman’s entire body tensed as she stared. She jumped to her feet.

  “Joshua! What the devil are you doing here?”

  “Wingtuck. My dearest—sister.” He motioned Lily and Kyosti to halt, came forward with his arms open. “How kind of you to receive us.”

  She spun away from him and placed a smart kick directly into his abdomen. He gasped, hard, but he did not go down.

  “Are you trying to get me killed?” she hissed. “Are you insane? I told you never to come back here.” Her stance, her voice, as she faced Heredes, who was still struggling to regain his breathing, was implacable. “I’ll give you one minute to explain. And one minute after that to get the hell out of here.”

  14 A Legal Bond

  FOR A MOMENT THERE was silence torn only by Heredes’s ragged breathing. Wingtuck Honor Jones looked suddenly past Heredes and caught sight of Kyosti.

  “Jesus and Mary,” she said. “Hawk?”

  “Still Catholic, I see,” he replied.

  “One is always Catholic Hawk,” she snapped, but the fear on her face subsided as she examined him. “Good Lord, boy, you have changed. What happened to you?”

  “That,” said Heredes on an in-drawn breath, “is a long story. Is there somewhere more private we can talk?”

  “Very well.” She appeared, now, resigned to her fate. “My office. But who is this?”

  “This is my daughter, Lily.”

  This explanation had, at least, the advantage of keeping Wingtuck in stunned silence through the entire walk to her office, just down the hall.

  “Now,” Wingtuck said as she settled into her chair. Her gaze kept straying to Kyosti as if she expected to see him sprout blue hair. “I directed you to a quiet place where you could lie low in return for you not bothering me. I don’t want your trouble, Joshua.”

  “My trouble, as you so conveniently phrase it, having found me, is most certainly looking for you as well, Wingtuck.”

  “Most certainly,” echoed Kyosti, with a sly look that Heredes, signing at him, banished.

  “And the peace lasted much longer than I expected,” added Heredes. “But all I am here for is to ask that you take Lily on as an instructor, to apprentice her, for the period we are here on Arcadia.”

  “Just like that?” said Wingtuck. “You walk in here, jeopardizing my cover and my Academy, and expect me to apprentice her? Is she qualified? Does she have ID? A visa? An extension for employment? Is she even a citizen of the Reft? Come now, Joshua. Let’s be reasonable.”

  “My dear Wingtuck,” said Heredes soothingly. “Getting an ID and a visa is the least of our problems—as you know perfectly well.”

  Wingtuck frowned. Lily watched her. She was a small-boned woman, tiny; Lily could give her a good fifteen centimeters in height and at least ten kilos in weight. But despite her size she had none of that suggestion of delicacy that Kyosti, by design or by accident, appeared at times to possess. She was hard as the metal-sheathed walls of Ransome House, impervious to the storms outside, utterly self-contained. “Why, Joshua?” she said at last. “Convince me.”

  Heredes smiled and settled with a pleased sigh into the deep padding of his chair. “Sweet Wing,” he began. “We’re in terrible trouble.”

  “Hawk, for one thing,” said Wingtuck. “What else?”

  “I beg your pardon,” protested Kyosti.

  “Yes,” said Heredes. “Hawk for one thing.” His smile disappeared as he examined Kyosti where he reclined in a sybaritic pose at Lily’s feet. “Most important, my dear,” his tone was grave now, “the Illustrious is dead.”

  Wingtuck’s gamine face hosted a quick series of expressions: disbelief, sorrow, fear, resolving into determination. She crossed herself. “So they’ve come after us at last.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Heredes. “Just about everyone, now that the Duke is no longer alive to—ah—cast his mantle of protection over us.”

  “I see.” Wingtuck fixed a look of acute suspicion on Kyosti. “And what brings you here, Hawk? Where have you been all these years?”

  “In prison,” he replied in a most agreeable tone. “A foolish mistake, but it only takes one.”

  “And how, may I ask, did you get out of prison?”

  He smiled with great sweetness. “I recanted. I was accounted a classic figure of rehabilitation and sent along with the expedition the League sent out here to round the last of us up, but, do you know, when my eyes fell on our Joshua, I realized how dreadfully bored I had become, so I absented myself with him and his beautiful daughter.”

  “Joshua! Have you lost your mind?” Wingtuck stood up. “Do you trust him?”

  “Of course I don’t trust him,” said Heredes. Kyosti offered him a brief, if ironic, salute. “But what choice did I have? I couldn’t leave him.”

  “Ah,” interposed Kyosti, “but you wish you had.”

  “I certainly do,” said Heredes. “I certainly do.” He looked at Wingtuck. “He won’t betray us.”

  “If he hasn’t already?” She turned icy eyes on Kyosti. “How much did you tell them?”

  Kyosti lifted a hand in careless dismissal. “You know how terribly weak my memory is,” he drawled.

  “I expect that it improves under drugs.”

  “My dear W
ingtuck.” Lily saw, by his face, that he was annoyed. “You know quite well that those kinds of drugs do not work on me.”

  “That’s true,” she muttered, unmollified. “But then why in Heaven’s name did they bring you out here with them?”

  He stood with abrupt swiftness. Anger emanated from him. “Because with all their fine philosophies of conflict resolution and nonviolence and rehabilitation for criminals”—a definite, heavy sarcastic emphasis here—“they’d rather not admit that they created us, you and me and Master Heredes and the rest of our kind, that they created terrorists, saboteurs whose creed had to be violence and murder and destruction. They’d rather not admit to the ways we won that war for them, calling us heroes and hating us and shunning us and fearing us at the same time.” He spun away, so furious, and yet so contained, that Lily feared for his control, feared this hidden depth of rage in him. “Still, still, Wingtuck, they can’t believe that our kind still exist among them, our kind, who choose violence first, not caring if we kill our enemies or ourselves, mouthing these sick, weak phrases of rehabilitation and then casting them off without a second’s regret. They expected us to stop, as if all that training could be negated by a second’s wish. Of course they brought me out here with them. They’ve forgotten that we can lie as easy as we can kill.”

  Wingtuck came out from behind her desk and walked up to Kyosti. He did not move, as if his words, sloughing his anger off him, had left him frozen without any further emotion to direct his actions. She laid her hand with surprising tenderness on his bronzed cheek.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said in an undertone. “My poor boy. What did they do to you?”

  He turned his face away from her hand and, with a movement more like collapse than rejection, sank to the floor beside Lily, resting his head against her leg. Lily blushed under Wingtuck’s keen eye, but she put one hand, nevertheless, to rest lightly on Kyosti’s pale hair. Against her, she felt his shallow, quick breaths slow and deepen.

  Wingtuck went back to her chair. The plain white walls of the office framed her as she examined her three visitors. A large poster advertising the Abagail Street Academy hung by the door; behind the desk, a painting depicted a pair of round-hatted farmers knee-deep in a rice paddy.

  “Vietnamese,” said Wingtuck suddenly.

  “I’m sorry?” asked Heredes.

  “Your Lily. She must have Vietnamese blood in her.”

  Heredes turned his head to gaze at Lily, who, under such scrutiny, looked down at Kyosti.

  “Don’t look at me,” disclaimed that man. “I’m not up on old Earth cultures.”

  “So she must,” said Heredes. “It had never occurred to me.”

  “It wouldn’t, round-eye,” replied Wingtuck, almost insulting.

  “What is Vietnamese?” asked Lily; as both Heredes and Wingtuck opened their mouths, she raised a hand. “No, don’t tell me. It’s a long story, right?”

  Heredes only smiled.

  “So the League rousted you out?” said Wingtuck to Heredes.

  “No. The chameleons rousted me out.”

  “Good Lord!” She put her hands over her face, lowered them after a moment to lie clasped in front of her. “I thought I would never have to see another one of them. We are busy.”

  “Yes,” said Heredes. “I let them capture me so I could get a look at what they had. Just one cruiser so far, I believe. Out for blood, of course. But they don’t know that the League is out here, too. I didn’t know the League was here until I tracked down Lily, who had come after me, believing that I had been kidnapped. But she, as well as Hawk and two colleagues, were in Jehanish custody at Nevermore.”

  “Jehanish?” The light, on Wingtuck’s hair, had a way of catching on the darkest strands as she turned her head, as if swallowed up by their blackness. “Ah, yes. I know who they are. There’s a well-known writer here, name of Pero, publishes underground, causes all sorts of agitation.”

  “Lily even met Jehane, lucky girl.” Heredes shot Lily a dryly mocking smile. “We had to exit in some haste. Talking with Hawk on our way here, I discovered that the League is in contact with the government of the Reft.”

  “And what does Hawk know about this?” asked Wingtuck acidly.

  “Nothing,” said Hawk, not moving, his voice partially muffled against Lily’s trousers. His eyes were shut. “They just brought me along for the ride.”

  “I’m satisfied that is true,” said Heredes. “But we haven’t gotten to the good part yet.”

  “Do tell.” Wingtuck smiled caustically.

  “Who should we meet but La Belle Dame, following the trail of the chameleons.”

  Wingtuck laughed. “Happy tidings for the Reft, for where La Belle leads the rest of the privateers shall soon follow. But Joshua, all this being true, why didn’t you just go with La Belle? Why come here?”

  “Because I want to know what the League is saying to the government at Central and for how long they’ve been in contact. We can’t run forever, Wing, and damned if I’m going to live the rest of my very long life cooped up on a pirate’s tub, no matter how luxurious.”

  “Groundhog,” said Wingtuck. “All right.” She leaned back in her chair. “I accept that our interests demand we link up for a bit. How do you plan to find out all this pertinent information?”

  “I’ll go into Central.”

  “Good luck. Security’s tight as a bull’s ass in fly time.”

  “Fetching phrase, Wing.”

  “Oh, I’m just a peasant at heart.”

  Heredes laughed. “No wonder you’ve survived so long. But really, Wing, getting into Central is not what I’m worried about.”

  “No, you wouldn’t be,” replied Wingtuck, but her gaze followed Heredes’s—to Kyosti.

  Kyosti’s eyes were still closed. Lily ascertained that with a quick glance and was astonished by the look exchanged by Wingtuck and Heredes. It could have been spoken, it was so blatant: “What, he won’t be going in with you?” And Heredes’s look in reply, negative and sad.

  “What are you planning to do, Kyosti?” Lily asked to cover that revealing silence.

  “I’d like to practice medicine again.” He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “But I don’t have a license for this region.”

  Wingtuck considered this. “I don’t know, Hawk. You can hardly hand them your Columbia diploma as verification. And it would take years to go back through school.”

  “No school,” said Kyosti.

  She shook her head, pensive, “But they’re desperate for help in the community clinics—most poor people never see anyone higher than a medical technologist anyway. If you passed the med-tech exams, they might offer you a visa extension. Even with the massive unemployment here, they still can’t fill those positions—”

  “Long hours, bad conditions, poor patients.” Kyosti smiled. “How much actual supervision by physicians is there? In the worst clinics?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t imagine there’s much. You’d probably have pretty free rein—and as close to conditions of battlefield medicine that you can get on a peaceful planet. But it doesn’t pay well. Certainly not enough to dress as you were accustomed to, believe me.”

  “I sew,” said Kyosti stiffly. “It’s my one creative outlet.” He lifted his head and surveyed, with his usual self-collected mockery, the surprised looks on Wingtuck’s and Heredes’s faces. “And in any case, any real occupation would be paradise for me.”

  “How long were you in prison, Hawk?” Heredes asked gently.

  Kyosti’s penetrating blue stare focused on the other man. “Sixteen years, seven months, three days. I can continue to the millisecond.”

  “I believe you,” murmured Wingtuck, but her gaze was almost pitying. “What about Lily?”

  “Haven’t I convinced you?” said Heredes. “She can apprentice here.”

  “She can take her chances, like Hawk. There must be other work she can do.”

  “There isn’t,” said Lily. To Heredes: “S
orry.”

  “Just consider, Joshua,” continued Wingtuck. “To give her instructional duties, to pay her any credit at all, she has to go on the employment rolls. To get on those, she has to have an extended worker’s visa. Legalities, you see. She’d never get a visa extension for this work—I have to hire from legal Arcadian citizens. You don’t understand the magnitude of the problem on this planet. Why do you think Jehane is so popular here?”

  “If we don’t help each other, Wingtuck, then we’re all lost.”

  Wingtuck said nothing.

  “Wing,” said Heredes slowly. “Is there no other way to make Lily legal?”

  Wingtuck gave a short, hard laugh. “Bond her to a permanent resident.”

  “Of course!” Heredes stood up. “I should have thought of that.”

  “No!” cried Kyosti, and he also stood up, and Wingtuck, perceiving trouble, rose as well.

  “Kyosti.” Lily’s voice sounded quite reasonable. “Sit down.” All three regarded her with astonishment. Kyosti sat. “Obviously,” Lily continued, “a long-term economic bond is out of the question. But a child-directed pair-bond—after one year, when I hadn’t yet conceived, it would automatically be dissolved.” She looked at Heredes. “Is one year enough time for what you need to do?”

  “Yes,” he said meekly.

  Lily turned her gaze to Wingtuck, but, seeing a smile caught just below the older woman’s expression, she favored her with a quick wink. “So where can I find a partner?”

  “That depends on how many credits you have to spend, or what political beliefs you’re willing to—ah—embrace.”

  “Hoy,” said Lily. “I had no idea it was so easy. But the only other person I’ve heard of on this planet is that writer, Pero.” She grinned. “And if he’s a Jehanist, he’s hardly likely to want to bond the woman who shot his leader.”

  But Heredes merely looked thoughtful. “An agitator,” he said, as if to himself. “That might be just the thing.” He cut off Lily’s question with a wave of one hand. “So, sensei Jones, you’ll take her?”