John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind Read online

  "Probably not, but then, Uncle Ramon doesn't always approve of everything I do. He has more important things on his mind just now. 1 doubt he'd even notice. The Supernova's a passenger liner, you know. It's got scads of unused cabins just now. I'll put you up in one of the luxury suites overnight and you can rejoin your ship when we come down for the next round of talks in the morning."

  "This suite got a lock on the door?" she asked suspiciously.

  He laughed heartily. He had a nice laugh, she thought. "You're a cautious one, aren't you? Yes, all our cabins are totally secure. Rich people always demand security."

  She faked a moment of thought, then: "Sure, I'll come along. If I can convince my skipper. I'll go ask."

  Kiril reported briefly on what she had overheard on her eavesdropping assignment first. "Izquierda tries to stir up trouble with every breath he takes," Torwald commented. "How come?"

  "Maybe it's just his nature," said the skipper. "Come on, let's go back to the ship and get some chow before we up ship. Even in the midst of historical events, people gotta eat."

  Then Kiril told them about the invitation. The skipper favored her with the kind of look reserved for the dangerously demented. "What?" she shouted, then, in a less public tone: "You accepted an invite from that human tick's nephew? Have you gone completely space happy?"

  "Come on, Skipper," said Michelle, "how do you know Huerta's anything like his uncle? I'd hate to be judged by the way some of my relatives behave."

  "Nor would I," Finn contributed. "Why, some of my family stayed sober and respectable all their lives."

  "I don't like it, Skipper," Lafayette protested. "We can't let a girl go over there alone with all those line people." He glared at Kiril and she glared back.

  "Who made you my guardian?" she demanded.

  "Huerta's the director's nephew, you young idiot," said-Bert. "Nobody'd dare molest his guest, for fear of being sacked and beached for life."

  "It's Huerta that worries me most," said Lafayette stubbornly.

  "No worry," K'Stin rumbled. "Huerta touch this little one and she doesn't like it, he require surgery. She is tougher than him. Tougher than most of you." The Viver was a connoisseur of survival aptitude, so his opinion had to be taken seriously.

  "I can take care of myself, all right," Kiril insisted. "I did pretty well the sixteen years of my life before you came along."

  "And," said Torwald, "a spy in the enemy camp isn't a bad idea."

  The skipper mulled it over for a minute. "All right," she said at last. "You can go. Keep your eyes and ears open, but don't go snooping on your own. Just smile, be nice, keep him at a distance, and whatever you do, don't attract Izquierda's attention. He kills people like disinfectant kills bacteria."

  "I'll be okay," Kiril said. "See you tomorrow." She walked back to the huge shuttle, where Huerta stood waiting by the ramp. Most of the party had already boarded.

  "That must have been quite a discussion," Huerta commented.

  "They were telling me to mind my manners, but they agreed that they can get along without me for tonight. Let's go see your ship."

  5

  Kiril was glad that she had experienced the luxury of the diplomatic section of the TFCS, because it kept her from rubbernecking foolishly aboard the Supernova. The shuttle had been a strictly utilitarian vehicle, and the flight to orbit had been spent in nervous small talk with Huerta. They had stopped first at the TFCS to drop off navy personnel, then had proceeded to the Supernova, orbiting only a few kilometers away.

  "Is all of it like this?" Kiril asked. They were in a huge reception area. A fountain arched its spray thirty feet overhead, and a divided staircase arched around the fountain to an upper level. High above the spray a crystal chandelier dangled from the ceiling.

  Huerta laughed. "No. This is the entrance to the luxury accommodations. There are tourist and immigrant accommodations as well, and cargo space. Those areas are still largely under construction. We brought the work crews along on this voyage, at double pay. I understand my uncle and the other directors got into some heated arguments with the navy over that. The line insisted on keeping its construction schedule, and my uncle has to vouch for our security."

  "Is this the only Supernova?" she asked. She ran a hand along the smooth wood of the stair banister. It was rubbed to a beautiful gloss.

  "It's the first, but soon we'll have an entire fleet. There are lifty more under construction, and more to follow. We'll sell off the old Class Ones to the smaller lines."

  "Fifty. It's hard to believe." They ascended the stair. It was carpeted so thickly that her boots made no sound. "A few months ago I wouldn't have believed there could be that much wealth in the whole galaxy."

  "The bigger lines are richer than nations used to be," Huerta said. "And they have to plan with centuries in mind. Research for the Supernova class was started more than thirty years ago. They'll be our prime carriers for the next twenty-five years, and research on the next generation of ships is already under way."

  "Hard to believe," she repeated. It was a long way from the uncertain little world of Space Angel and her hand-to-mouth existence. And she was still wondering why he was so determined to impress her. They came to a multitiered area of glass-fronted enclosures, many of them illuminated and all of them empty.

  "This will be a mall area of expensive shops, restaurants, entertainment complexes and such. There are five such areas in the ship, graduated according to the traveling budgets of the passengers in the various sectors."

  "It's like a whole city," she said.

  "Bigger than many. Fully manned, with a full load of passengers, this ship can carry more than ninety thousand people. Of course, the bulk of those would be traveling in immigrant quarters. Not quite as luxurious as this level."

  "1 can imagine," she said.

  "Right now only a small section of this first-class level is occupied for this voyage. Then there's the bridge and engine crew, and, of course, the construction crews down in the cargo area. Only a few hundred people aboard. What would you like to see first?"

  "You're the tour guide," she said.

  "Then let's start with the bridge." He took her to an elevator that ascended along an invisible magnetic column through the mall and into a higher level. They got oft" in a corridor that was far more institutional-looking than the level below. Personnel in color-coded uniforms bustled about in a disciplined fashion. This part of the ship, at least, was fully staffed. Through open doors she caught glimpses of rooms filled with banks of instruments, all of them tended by diligent-looking employees. It looked like dull work, not that she had much experience with people who worked at steady jobs.

  She braced herself for trouble when she saw the towering form of Izquierda striding towards them, a gaggle of ship's officers in tow. "Tomas," he said, without breaking stride, "I want to speak to you this evening after dinner."

  "Yes, sir," Huerta said. To Kiril's intense relief, Izquierda had passed them without sparing her a glance. "That's the way he is most of the time," Huerta said. "He doesn't take much notice of people unless he has some immediate purpose for them."

  "That suits me," Kiril said. "I don't think we'd strike up a real sparkling conversation, anyway."

  The bridge was suitably impressive. The biggest viewscreen was ten meters high by twenty meters long, and there were others not much smaller. Two screens kept the alien settlement constantly in view. Another showed the TFCS, and a small one, Kiril noted, had the Space Angel in its sights.

  "Why are you keeping watch on the Angel?' she asked.

  "Regulations. All nearby craft have to be kept under constant observation. There were some terrible collisions in the early days of space travel, and we have more observation and warning systems than you'd believe."

  "Not exactly homey, is it?" she said, scanning the three-level room with its huge variety of instrumentation. There were at least a hundred people on duty.

  "That's not an adjective I ever thought to apply
to a ship," Huerta admitted. "I suppose if you spent your life in one ship and knew everybody in the crew, you'd think-of it as a home. Line ships aren't like that, I'm afraid."

  From the bridge they toured the support systems, the junglelike hydroponics section, the complex supply system.

  "If, say, somebody in engineering wants a machine part from supply," Huerta explained, "he just encodes his request over the ship's computer net and the part will be delivered from supply within ten minutes. It's entirely automated." Kiril thought about Torwald's supply room and machine shop; tiny, cramped, and crammed with the surplus of the Angel's hundred-odd years in space.

  They passed through the cargo section on their way to visit the engine section. A car running smoothly on a magnetic rail transported them the length of the ship. At a hatchway leading into a hold, Huerta stopped the car. "Let s see, this is Hold Two. Let me show you the inside." They hopped out of the car and he touched a combination on a numbered plate. The hatch swung open and Kiril blinked at the vast emptiness inside. The hold was almost as large as the one the Angel had ridden in aboard the TFCS. The hatchway opened onto an access catwalk. "There are three more holds like this," Huerta said. "This ship is designed to carry entire colony parties, complete with people, equipment, and livestock."

  Across the corridor, at an identical hatch, a tough-looking security man sat in a guard post. That hold was marked no admittance.

  Kiril pointed to the guarded hold. "I thought you weren't carrying anything this trip."

  Huerta shrugged. "There's still construction going on. There may be crews working in there, or maybe it's not pressurized. It could be dangerous to go in there."

  Kiril felt a sudden spinal chill. She knew, the way that she always knew such things, that Huerta was lying about the hold. Something important was in there and he didn't want her to know about it. She filed it away for later. They climbed back into the car and headed for the engine room. On the way they passed a small group of men in silver coveralls. Kiril's attention fastened on them, although she made sure not to be obvious. They were tough-looking and scarred, like the guard at the cargo hatch. They were the kind of men she used to see following Pao Lin and the other K'ang leaders in Civis Astra. "Are those some of the construction people you were talking about?" she asked casually.

  "That's right," he said. "They're still working in this area."

  Once again she knew he was lying.

  As she had expected, the engine room was big. She was getting tired of big. This spacegoing city was just a ship, like Space Angel, in everything except size. Given a choice, she knew she would pick the Angel any day. At least there all the people were professional spacers, which was what she wanted to be. Huerta had showed her a whole infirmary for the sole purpose of coddling rich passengers through Whooppee drive horrors.

  "Now you've seen her from one end to the other," -Huerta said, smiling up at a thruster only slightly smaller than the Space Angel herself. "What do you think?"

  "It's kind of hard to take in all at once," she said. "It's overwhelming, you know?" That seemed like a good, neutral line to take. She wanted to keep him talking, to learn anything that might be of help to her friends, and that meant not offending Huerta. She knew real flattery would be better yet, but she had never used it and didn't know how.

  "It sometimes has that effect," he said proudly. Then he glanced at his watch. "It's time for dinner. All the ship's officers and line officials dine with the director in the main wardroom. That includes me, I fear. Come on, you must be hungry by now. I promise not to seat us too close to the old man. With luck, he won't even notice us."

  "Sounds fine," she said. "I'm starved." It was true, she really was ravenous. It had been a long time since breakfast, and somehow she had overlooked lunch. She was also fighting a treacherous urge to like Huerta. How could she possibly like someone she didn't trust? It was an uncomfortable feeling.

  The wardroom was a paneled chamber with low-key lighting and walls decorated with holos of famous Satsuma ships of years past. A single, long table ran down the center of the room, and Huerta found them seats several places down from where the director was deep in conversation with a senior officer. They did not escape notice entirely, however.

  "Good evening, Tomas," Izquierda said. His gaze fastened on Kiril. "Aren't you from Space Angel's crew, young lady?"

  "I invited her up, Director," Huerta said. "I've been giving her the grand tour."

  "I might have known," Izquierda said, "that you would find someone to show the ship off to, and that it would be someone pretty. Enjoy your visit, young lady." He turned back to his conversation. There had been no disapproval in his voice. It was hard to believe that this was the man with the killer look she had seen at the diplomatic function. But she knew that she was never wrong about those things.

  Kiril barely noticed what she was eating. Izquierda's presence made her nervous, and the other officers at the table were not going out of their way to set her at ease. She was, after all, an interloper from a free freighter, even if she was there as Huerta's guest. She ate a lot anyway. In a way, she didn't mind her relative isolation at the table, because it gave her a little time to think about what she had seen. Izquierda was up to something, and it had been something to do with that forbidden hold and those men who obviously weren't construction workers. And, whether he was in on the plan or not, Huerta was covering for his uncle and was not to be trusted.

  But what had all this to do with the aliens? There had to be some reason for hauling Space Angel and her crew all the way out here where negotiations were opening. Was it part of Izquierda's revenge or had he found some convenient way to fit one plot into another? She had known people who could do such things, back in Civis Astra. It all called for further investigation. When Huerta spoke to her, she smiled automatically and said whatever seemed to be most diplomatic. Her mind was elsewhere.

  When the dinner broke up, Huerta showed her to her quarters. "There's no telling how long the director will be keeping me in his meeting," Huerta told her, "so I'll assume it'll be a long time. There's a lot more to see in this ship, but it's been a long day and 1 know you're tired. I'll see you in the morning."

  "You're right," she said. "I'm.exhausted." She scanned the room for something to clout him with if he should make the wrong move. Instead, he just bowed slightly and left. She was a little disappointed. He could have made some kind of move, even if it earned him a minor bruise.

  The suite he had installed her in was lavish, as she had known it would be. She was already numb to magnificence, but the fixtures and appliances intrigued her. She had no idea what most of them were; there seemed to be no manual of instruction, and she wasn't about to ask. Apparently, rich people were expected to know what all these things were. There was a bar with bottles and dispensers. She examined a respirator that was attached to a tube set into the bar. She touched a switch and purple smoke swirled from the tube into the mask. She recognized the scent of a drug favored by certain lowlifes in Civis Astra. It was illegal there, although it was readily available in the dope houses. Apparently, not everybody went by the standards of Civis Astra legality.

  She couldn't believe the bathroom. In the center was a walk-in tub big enough for at least a dozen people. The Spartan accommodations of Space Angel allowed only chemical baths, efficient but short on luxury. She had seen baths like this only in holographic entertainments about the lives of the rich. This she had to try. After studying its control panel for a few minutes, she punched in a combination. Water swirled in to form a rising whirlpool, capped with rich foam and pungent with scented oils.

  She paused before stepping in. It looked big enough to drown in there. She worked up her courage and took the steps one at a time. When she was in up to her chin, she sat back on the padded ledge and admired the colored lights that played artfully beneath the surface. It had taken some real imagination to turn the simple process of getting clean into something so decadent. She had a sneaking, uncomfortabl
e feeling that she could get used to living like this.

  Maybe that was the point of the whole show. Was that what they intended from the first: to seduce her with the soft life, then make their proposal? Suddenly the outrageous bath wasn't so enjoyable. She got out and stepped under an air dryer, regretting that she had come here at all. No, that wasn't right. Something was going on in this ship, something threatening to Space Angel and everyone in her. Kiril had to find out what it was.

  It was still only late evening. That meant she could get some sleep before she set to work. The skipper had told her not to go snooping on her own, but she figured that this was important enough to override her instructions. There was a timer in the headboard, and she set it to wake her an hour before the late watch was relieved. At that hour people would be sleepy and not at their most alert. She picked a spot on the bed to sleep in. Her whole crew could have slept in it without crowding. As on her first night in her cabin bunk, Kiril had trouble getting used to the softness. Here, it was like lying on air. But this bed was equipped with soothing music and some kind of soporific mist that helped her nod off. It seemed strange that rich people should need help in getting to sleep. Probably, she thought just before sliding under, it was the thought of how they got rich that troubled their sleep.

  The timer woke her with a gentle vibration. Whatever the soporific was, it cleared from her head as she sat up, leaving her clear-headed and alert. She checked and made sure she had slept only four hours. It was as good as a full night's sleep to her. She felt rested and ready to go. Also, there was the extra excitement that what she was doing was a bit dangerous. Much as she had come to like the routine of life aboard Space Angel, she missed the occasional moments of heart-pounding do-or-die excitement she had known on the streets.

  She got into her coverall and boots and left the suite. She had determined to carry out this part of her snooping without bothering to avoid being seen. Why should she? Nobody had told her she was confined to her suite until morning. The few people she passed in the corridors did not spare her a glance. It was as good as being invisible.