Price of Ransom Read online

  “A rogue?” Lily glanced at the Dai for elucidation.

  “A je’jiri adult, male or female, who travels without benefit of family, is considered with sufficient reason to be of aberrant status,” replied the Dai softly.

  “It were a rogue male, all right,” repeated the bartender, either not hearing or ignoring this exchange.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t this man?” Lily asked.

  He shook his head. “He weren’t human. Sure, and maybe there were some resemblance of face and such. I got a good look, since they’re rare to see, and dangerous enough. Begging pardon again, honorables.”

  “No offense taken,” replied the Dai smoothly.

  For some reason the clear, crisp sound of her voice startled him. “It were no offense because he was je’jiri,” he said quickly, “but just because he was solo, and acting strangely.”

  “What did he do?”

  He hesitated.

  Lily waited, sure that this was the clue they were lacking. Kyosti’s trail had led them to Karkara Link and on to Nagy Depot and Batoen Center and then here, to Nineveh Gate, a small station orbiting a dead planet that circled a white dwarf. And into this bar. Only now, somehow, it seemed it was no human they were following, but a rogue je’jiri male. It seemed impossible but all too probable to her that the je’jiri had lost his scent, or mixed it up with another’s.

  “It gave me the jeebies,” he said at last. “He come in here and begun laying hands on people like he was one of them reform preachers of the Church of Three Faiths. And then he’d lean down and speak to them in a low voice like it were a bit of the Mother’s word he was imparting. And what made it so weird is that he did it to both men and women alike. And you know how they are—je’jiri, begging your pardon—about touching you if you isn’t the same sex. It was weird.”

  “What did he say to people?”

  He grinned for a second, looking embarrassed. “Nothing people wanted to repeat.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Well,” he temporized. “He went the rounds of the entire place, and no one trying to stop him because it was queer enough to be unsettling and anyway no one wants to rile a rogue.”

  “You have to understand,” said Lily, “that this could be important. Did he say anything to you?”

  He grabbed two glasses from the rack under the bar and temporized further by pulling two drafts of a dark foamy liquid.

  A small woman appeared in the door that led into the dark room. “You might as well tell them.”

  “Kam—” he began.

  “It’s no secret you drink too much,” she continued mercilessly.

  “He told me my liver was going bad,” said the bartender sullenly, setting the full glasses on the bar and sliding them down to a couple who had managed to signal for them without words.

  “And he told me I was pregnant,” said Kam, “which was a surprise to me since I hadn’t gone long enough to miss my cycle yet. Not that it wasn’t welcome news, since we’d gone off the implants six months ago and were waiting—but it usually takes one year. But I went in yesterday, and sure enough—and the doctor was amazed I’d caught it so early.”

  Lily looked at the Dai and then at Jenny. “It was Kyosti. I’m sure of it.”

  “In any event, an unlikely je’jiri, solo or not,” replied the Dai evenly.

  “Then what happened?” Lily asked.

  The bartender shrugged. “He left. With old Ramshackle Joes, who runs a scratch ferry between here and Zeya Depot. She’s rattled enough to take any paying cargo.”

  “She’s a dream crystal addict,” Kam added helpfully. “She has to take any credit she can get. Even a rogue.”

  Lily sighed and rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, although this new development seemed yet another, and greater, discouragement. “We’ll check Registry.”

  “Ferry’s name is Better Red,” Kam offered. She looked directly at the je’jiri, not at all discomposed by their presence. “This a family matter?”

  “Yes,” said Lily, feeling hopelessly tired. “A family matter. I appreciate your help.”

  “Best luck,” Kam said. The bartender mumbled something unintelligible. Lily nodded to the Dai, and the two je’jiri preceded her out of the bar, the customers quieting and staring as they passed.

  Jenny fell into step beside her. “Maybe you ought to sleep, Lily-hae,” she said. “You’re on the same cycle as most of the crew. You shouldn’t have stayed up. We could have traced this without you.”

  “Void knows you have enough practice,” Lily replied, bitter. “It’s taken us one month to get this far, and I think he’s getting farther ahead of us. How can we possibly catch him? What happens to him if we don’t?”

  “You are tired,” Jenny laid a hand on Lily’s back, between her shoulder blades, a light pressure as they walked along the corridors of Nineveh Gate. “Even the scruffy little stations here look rich,” she continued, as if this comment might distract Lily from her despondency. “At least compared to the Reft. This place is crawling with plants. Can you imagine what it costs to maintain them? Maybe Deucalion is right, that it would be a crime for the League’s government not to open relations with the Reft, bring them in to the Concord. And, give them the benefit of all this.” She waved a hand to encompass the spacious lines of the station, half obscured by vines and trestles of flowering plants.

  Lily did not respond. Her expression remained detached; she might not even have heard.

  “Come on,” said Jenny, half-cajoling, half-scolding. “Go to bed. I’ll go with the Dai to trace down this Joes person.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Lily reluctantly.

  “Of course I’m right. Rainbow. Mule.” The two called split back from their positions in front of the je’jiri. “Escort the captain back to the Hope.”

  Lily allowed herself to be escorted. She was tired, and discouraged. She had such hopes, starting from Turfan Link, that they would catch up with Kyosti at the next station, then the next, then the next. Now she wondered if it was possible that they could catch him at all. Or if they would catch him too late. At this station and the last the people she had interviewed—people familiar with je’jiri—had stuck by their conviction that the solo male passing through was pure and simply je’jiri. Alien. What was he turning into? Could she ever get Kyosti back again? Hope is a terrible thing, Finch had said, and right now she agreed with him.

  At the link bubble a message waited: Deucalion wanted to see her. She quickly ascertained that he was in the mess. Leaving the Mule and Rainbow, she went there.

  He sat alone in the room. In deference to night cycle, the lights had been dimmed, but he looked up as she entered and lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Something to drink?” he asked as she approached.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Are you sure? You look tired.” He cradled a mug between his hands, lifting it occasionally to sip, but when she sat down with only a shake of her head he shrugged. “We’re being resupplied. We should be ready to go in four hours. Any luck with the hounds?”

  “We think he’s gone on to Zeya Depot. They’re out confirming that now.”

  “I didn’t think it would take this long. I’m sorry, Lily.”

  “Maybe I will have a drink.”

  Taking her cue, he got up and fetched a mug of the hot, bitter drink called café that, together with beer, seemed endemic to League space. “Well, then,” he said, looking at a loss for what to say next. “I was going to mention—but perhaps this isn’t the right time.”

  She looked up at him, too weary to postpone what looked to be, by his expression, bad news. “Go ahead.”

  “While I was in arranging the resupply with Nineveh Coordinator, the Concord representative came in expressly to see me. It seems that a rogue je’jiri male had caused several public disturbances, but vanished before they finally decided to call out the constables on him. Mostly incidents that were more troubling tha
n dangerous, but one woman claimed he tried to carry off her child and two men who came on him unexpectedly in one of the warehouse corridors said they narrowly averted an attack by freezing and speaking very softly and slowly. As one would,” he added thoughtfully, “to a startled and cornered animal. That’s how one of the men described it.”

  Lily stood up. “I think I’m going to get some rest, if there’s nothing further.”

  “No, I—Lily—I’m sorry.”

  She felt the prick of tears and turned away so that he could not see her face. “There’s nothing you could have done,” she said brusquely, and left, unwilling to face his sympathy. She took a slightly longer route to the elevator, passing by crew cabins along corridors that at this cycle would likely be deserted. The possibility of speaking normally to anyone seemed too great a trial. So, following the trend of this thought to its logical conclusion, it was with no surprise that she crossed the path of an altercation very much in progress.

  A door shot open and Paisley backed out through it with as much force as if she had been pushed.

  “I told you not to bother me,” said Finch from inside, his voice edged not so much with anger as with desperation. “I don’t know what makes you think I want something that everyone else on this ship has already sampled.”

  “It were offered in kindness,” Paisley replied with stubborn dignity, but there were tears on her face. “There be no reason for you to insult me. And it bain’t true, no matter what you think about me, that I slept with ya everyone. Even if it were, there be nothing shameful about being kind.”

  “Especially if they pay you.”

  Paisley gasped, choking on a sob, and put a hand to her cheek as if he had slapped her. Then she turned and fled away down the corridor.

  “Paisley!” Lily called, but Paisley disappeared around a corner, heedless of the call.

  “Lily?” Finch sounded surprised, now, and abruptly he appeared in the doorway. His face had a flushed look, as if he were embarrassed, or furious, or fighting back tears.

  “I’m ashamed of you. How could you say that to her, after everything she’s been through?”

  “What about everything I’ve been through?” he retorted. “What do people care for that? Why does everybody cosset her so much? And anyway, everyone knows tattoos are all whores.”

  “Everyone knows you’re a Hells-forsaken bigot, Finch.” Her own depression fueled her anger. “I wasn’t aware that you ever advocated the Byssinist line of strict monogamy, given my mother didn’t, and she never missed Temple. Just because the Ridanis have a different way of expressing sexual relations—”

  “Tupping everything that walks.”

  “Spite is one of the ugliest emotions I know. What happened to you, Finch? You never used to be like this.”

  His expression twisted in pain. “I used to have a home, and people who cared for me.”

  “Maybe that’s why Paisley came to you.”

  “I don’t want her pity.”

  “If you abuse her like that, you’re not going to get anyone else’s either.”

  “I don’t want anyone’s pity,” Finch said, his voice flat. “Just leave me alone.” He stepped back into his cabin and the door, blank and unrevealing, hissed shut behind him, cutting him off from her.

  She hesitated, wondering if she should try to talk to him again. As angry as his treatment of Paisley made her, she could still sympathize with his pain. And yet would her sympathy seem any better than pity to him?

  “Oh, Hells,” she sighed, and walked on, preferring, like him, to be alone with her unhappiness. Mercifully, she met no one else, and the quiet emptiness of her cabin was a relief to her. She went directly into the inner room, to lie down, and stopped. Her instincts told her immediately that some-thing was different. An impression left on the bed, a subtle air of habitation. …The door to the washing cubicle brushed aside, and he stepped out. Quite naked.

  “Pinto!”

  He held a towel in one hand but he did not immediately move to wrap it around himself, whether out of vanity, or surprise on his part, or simple invitation—she could not help but stare. He was certainly attractive enough. The tattoos lent his body a beauty made more seductive by the way each pattern drew the eye in and then on to the next. The stark geometric patterns of his face and arms continued around the planes of his slender body, accenting it with color and line Every inch of him was covered, that was quite apparent.

  She flushed. “What are you doing here?” she asked, and was appalled at how young and ingenuous she sounded.

  He wrapped the towel neatly about his waist so that it draped artfully to his knees. “You’ve seemed—lonely, and a little sad.” He walked over to sit on the bed. It made a pleasant picture, to see him sitting there, so at home. “When I saved your life on Arcadia, I got my kinnas back, from when you saved mine. So it wouldn’t be presumptuous to approach you. It was never the right time, before. But I think,” and his gaze was unfortunately acute, looking at her face, and at the way she stood, “that it is, now.”

  What Paisley meant by “kindness” became painfully clear to her. Not the act of sex, but the free offering of love and companionship, of intimate contact when the soul most craves it. Perhaps, all along, it was Paisley’s understanding of his pain that Finch hated, not her tattoos.

  Pinto simply sat, patient in the way all Ridanis had learned to be in the Reft, and waited for her response.

  It was too tempting. She did not move from the door. “You have to go,” she said, low, a little hoarse. She looked away from him.

  She felt him stiffen. “Can’t lower yourself to touch a cursed tattoo, is it?” he taunted, his voice tight. She could not reply. There was a sudden silence. Then he said, softer: “Lily, look at me. Please.”

  She kept her gaze resolutely fixed away from him. “I can’t.”

  “You want to.” He sounded pleased with this discovery. “I thought you did. Then why not?”

  “Pinto. Kyosti tried to murder Finch.”

  “He’s not here. And he didn’t murder Finch in the end, did he? Showing a Hells lot of restraint, if you ask me.”

  Now she did look up. “Pinto. I’m going to tell you something no one else knows.” He sat, attentive and still bitterly attractive, and listened. “I had two lovers before I met Hawk. One was Finch. The other is dead. Hawk murdered him.”

  The quiet brutality of her statement seemed to hit him the most. “Murdered him? Like Vanov?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see the body.”

  “He wasn’t arrested?”

  “They never caught him. I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in.” She forced herself to look at Pinto as she spoke, although she was afraid of the disgust she might see now that he knew what she was capable of. “I keep telling myself that there was nothing else I could have done. You know what he is.”

  “I guess he’s half-alien,” said Pinto. He looked neither judgmental or revolted, merely thoughtful, which was, in its own way, worse. “So the je’jiri really do mate for life, exclusively. I feel sorry for them.” But unspoken, as he stood up, was his pity for her as well.

  “I do want to, Pinto,” she said, because she felt he deserved the truth. “But I can’t.”

  He smiled, stopping directly in front of her. “They haven’t found him yet, have they?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I hope we do. Hawk always treated a person for themselves, not what they looked like. Vanov deserved what he got.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Lily murmured, “but I’m hardly in a position to argue, since it was my life he saved.”

  “I wonder if the je’jiri have kinnas,” he mused.

  He had not moved any farther away from her. His presence, so close, was if anything worse than the sight of him seated on the bed. Perhaps he could read her as easily as Kyosti could. He bent, slowly, nearer, and kissed her. Long enough, lingering enough, invitation enough—she sighed and leaned into him. Her hands crept up to touch hi
s back.

  And jerked away again. “Pinto,” she snapped, “would you leave?”

  He laughed, understanding her perfectly. “You have to let me out.”

  “Wait a minute. How did you get in?”

  “Bach let me in.”

  “Bach!” She keyed in the code automatically and the door slid open. “Bach let you in”—He passed through the doorway and walked on to the far door. “Pinto! You can’t go out in the halls half-naked like that!”

  He paused at the far door as it slipped aside to reveal gold deck corridor. “Why not?” He grinned. “It’s nothing that most of the women on this ship haven’t already seen.” The outer door sighed shut behind this provocative remark before Lily could reply, but she could not help but chuckle a little as she turned back to face the bed. It looked long and empty and lonely.

  The com chimed. “Captain.” Trey’s voice. “Off-ship communication.”

  “Put it through.” Lily felt abruptly tired again. “This is Ransome.”

  “Seria here. We’ve got the lead. The ferry left four days ago for Zeya Depot.”

  “Thank you, Jenny. Come back aboard.” She keyed the bridge. “Trey. Set a course for Zeya Depot. We’ll leave as soon as all crew are back on board and the resupply is finished. Check with min Belsonn for that schedule.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Wake me up in six hours. Ransome out.” She sat down on the bed. And felt it again, that worst of emotions: hope. Maybe on Zeya Depot … “Maybe you should sleep,” she muttered, and went to wash up.

  13 The Good Doctor

  ZEYA DEPOT’S COORDINATOR WAS adamant. “No doubt whatsoever. A rogue je’jiri male. There was some trouble. A fight. A man thought he was trying to pick up on his woman friend, putting a hand on her, or something. The testimony is still being sorted out. In any case, the rogue was arrested—had to be restrained.” The coordinator paused, sharing a look of distaste with her assistant. “Next thing I knew the Concord representative showed up and took him off my hands.”