LC01 Sweet Starfire Read online

  She would probably find one, he reflected as he sprawled in the back of the runner and listened to the faint shushing sound of the vehicle’s twin blades on the pavement. Some renegade such as Neveril or Scates would lick his chops and produce a very neatly worded convenience contract before Cidra quite realized what was happening. She would be on her way to Renaissance, only to discover that her Harmonic trappings weren’t much protection from certain kinds of Wolves.

  Severance shifted restlessly as the lights of the port facilities came into view. It wasn’t any of his business, he told himself angrily. By all accounts, Harmonics were quite intelligent; someone from Clementia had the ability to make her own decisions. She certainly didn’t need Severance’s help.

  As the runner hissed to a halt Teague paid the fare with his credit plate and climbed out. He stood on the glowing sidewalk, staring at the tapering, floodlit outline of his ship out on the field. Severance Pay was poised for an immediate liftoff, her stubby, swept-back wings seeming to strain at the inconvenience of being planetbound. She was always ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The competition for lucrative mail runs was stiff, and Severance had no intention of missing out on prime cargo simply because his ship wasn’t ready to leave.

  Automatically he removed one of two small remotes he carried on his utility loop and punched into Severance Pay’s primary onboard computer. He queried for messages and read the response on the small screen of the remote. A couple of friends had hit port and left word that they could be reached at one of the nearby bars if Severance happened to feel like a game of Free Market. There was a fuel tab that the computer had already been authorized to pay. And there was a terse message from one of the local postal agents saying that he’d had a special request from a client.

  Severance knew what that meant. A patron had asked for him and his ship by name. With any luck that meant an important run. He started for the bank of comp-phones that were housed in a nearby terminal.

  “Hey, Severance, you son of a renegade, where’s the little Saint?”

  Severance hesitated and then decided that he couldn’t shake Scates by simply ignoring him. The other postman grinned and waved from the terminal doorway.

  “I took her back to her hotel.” Severance made to step around the man who had obviously been doing the port-strip taverns.

  “Heard she was looking for a contract.”

  “Not the kind you mean.”

  “I’m not particular,” Scates assured him. His broken nose twisted at an odd angle when he leered. “I take it you’re not going to give her a lift?”

  “No.”

  “You’re missing a great opportunity, Severance. Me, I could think of plenty of things to teach a little Saint between here and QED.”

  Severance didn’t bother to respond as he started through the open terminal door. But as the clear diazite panels slid shut behind him, he glanced back and saw that Scates was grinning more widely than ever. In the up-from-under pavement lighting his features seemed almost ludicrously demonic. Severance cursed his imagination again and turned away.

  Even as he found a vacant comp-phone and punched in the postal agent’s code, Severance knew what Scates was going to do. And as he listened to the agent tell him that there was a rush shipment of small but vital robot sensors that would pay twice the usual rates, Teague Severance was visualizing Scates offering Cidra a contract of convenience. Scates’s convenience.

  TWO

  He shouldn’t have tried to touch her.

  Cidra found herself shaking uncontrollably. Perhaps, she told herself, if the man who called himself Scates had only continued to wheedle or argue, nothing would have happened. But he had reached for her, and Cidra had seen the hot lust in his eyes. She had reacted instinctively because there had been no real time to think.

  All her life her body had been kept supple and strong with the ancient exercise. The training had begun before she could walk. Cidra couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know the essentials of Moonlight and Mirrors. Intellectually she had known, too, that the flowing, deceptively simple movements were based on an ancient form of self-defense, records of which had arrived with the First Families of Stanza Nine nearly two hundred years ago.

  But no one she knew in Clementia had ever actually used it in self-defense. She was shocked by how her body had reacted to the first genuine threat it had ever known. One moment Scates had lunged for her, and the next he was lying half conscious on the floor. The instant in between had been a shifting pattern that hadn’t required any thought or preparation on Cidra’s part. She had known the basics since she was a child. But she had never known herself capable of using them so effectively in this way.

  The hem of Cidra’s black-and-silver sleeping surplice was still swirling around her ankles and Scates had just hit the floor when the hotel room’s communication panel announced another visitor. Cidra tore her stunned gaze from the man at her feet and stared at the softly lit door panel. Just then Scates stirred, groaning, and Cidra stepped quickly out of the way of his hand. The door panel hummed softly, demanding her attention. Because she could think of nothing else to do, Cidra went to the panel and switched on the screen. The fine tremors in her body seemed to grow worse when she saw who stood outside her door.

  “Severance,” she whispered.

  On the small screen his hard, unforgiving features were etched in impatient, irritated lines, as if he didn’t approve of either his surroundings or his business in the hotel. Indeed, he did look out of place in the elegant hall, his lean, dark figure a harsh contrast to the silvered carpet and the soft, waving patterns of soothing hues that decorated the walls. Behind him the subtly concealed security monitors turned politely toward his profile and then moved on, not yet alarmed.

  “Cidra? Let me inside. I want to talk to you. If you don’t open the door, the hall monitors are going to start recording my actions, and then we’ll have to explain everything to the front desk.” When she didn’t respond immediately, he went on more harshly. “Come on, lady, I haven’t got all night. I’m in one renegade hell of a hurry. I’ve got to get my ship off the ground within the hour.”

  “Severance, you’d better go away.” Cidra’s voice sounded strange to her own ears. “Something’s happened. I don’t think you’ll want to get involved.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Cidra, let me in. Now.”

  The soft crack of command in his words jolted her. She was unfamiliar with such an approach to the giving of instructions. Cidra found herself releasing the computerized locks on her door without even thinking. A moment later he was striding into the room, shutting the door behind him. His gaze slid quickly over her form, assessing the apparent lack of physical damage. Then he stared at Scates, who was still out of commission. Swearing softly, Severance knelt beside the other man, feeling for a throat pulse.

  “I knew it,” Severance said. The words were full of morose resignation. “I knew he’d come here, and I knew you’d probably let him into your room without a second thought. Naive little fool. What did you do to him?”

  Cidra locked her hands in front of her. “When he came to the door, he said he would be willing to take me with him on his mail run. I let him in and we started to discuss the matter. Then he made it clear that he was only offering one of those convenience contracts you mentioned. When I declined and asked him to leave, he . . . he touched me. Tried to grab me. His eyes were strange, Severance. Almost wild. And his hand was damp. I think he wanted to have sex with me.”

  Severance shot her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, I’d say that was one way of putting it. He probably thought you’d be easy game. I guess you surprised him, though.”

  “There was no time to think.” Cidra stopped as she heard the apology in her words. Then she went on with grave honesty. “But even if there had been time to analyze the matter, I believe I would have done the same thing.”

  “What, exactly, did you do?”

  “It’s called Moonlight and Mirrors. It�
�s a kind of dance. An exercise, really. But it’s based on a very old self-defense technique. My instructors always said I had a unique style of interpretation,” she added lamely.

  “I can see what they meant.”

  Cidra watched with a frown as Severance pulled a small object from his loop and held it to Scates’s temple. He pressed the small touch pad on the end of the device, and the other man’s body jerked once. Then Scates went ominously still.

  Deeply disturbed by her victim’s new appearance, Cidra touched Severance on the shoulder. “What have you done?”

  “Bought us a little time.” He got to his feet, and then saw the horrified expression on her face. “Don’t worry. He’s not dead. I just finished what you started. Hell be out until morning, and by then we’ll be long gone.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I’m taking you with me.” He began moving around the room, opening the door of the closet. “I know I’m going to regret it, but I can’t seem to think of a way around having to take you along. Maybe I can dump you off in Clementia before I head out to Renaissance.”

  “I am not going back to Clementia, Otan Severance. I can’t go back. Not yet.”

  He swung around, her travel pack in his hands. “We’ll discuss it on the way to Lovelorn.” He thrust the pack toward her. “Here get your things together and let’s get out of here. As long as Scates stays unconscious in your room, the privacy locks will protect us. Once he gets on his feet and wanders out into the hail, the security monitors will pick him up, and then the questions will start. I vote we leave him alone here to answer them. He’s not likely to flip any complaints against you. How could he explain that he got knocked unconscious by a lady from Clementia? His pride will be our best protection. Unfortunately it won’t protect us from his friends, who will be looking for blood. So get packed, now.”

  Somehow it seemed easier to obey when he used that cold, hard tone. She was still trembling from the violence she had caused and had no desire to question Severance’s decisiveness. Numbly she began to remove her formal robes from the closet and fold them in the proper manner.

  “We haven’t got time for you to practice the fine art of elegant garment folding. Here, I’ll take care of the clothes. You get everything else together.” Severance grabbed the liquid-soft garments from her hand and began stuffing them into the travel pack.

  “My books,” she said, trying not to watch as he treated her lovely gowns as if they were dirty ship suits. “I’ll get my books.”

  “There’s room in this pack for them,” he told her.

  She glanced at him in surprise as she began pulling the beautifully bound volumes from the autostorage unit beside the bed. “Oh, no, there couldn’t possibly be enough room. I have a separate pack for them.”

  “I could get a couple hundred data slips in here,” he assured her before glancing over and seeing what she was doing. “Saints in hell! Those aren’t slips. They’re books. Real books.”

  “Of course.” She touched one of the handworked covers reverently. “No information storage system ever invented can compare aesthetically with a genuine book. They are such beautiful things.”

  It was Severance’s turn to look shocked. “They must weigh as much as an exploroprobe. What do you think Severance Pay is, a cargo freighter? Leave ‘em here. I just arranged for a crate of Rose ale to be put on board. There isn’t room for your damn books.”

  Cidra clutched the volume she was holding to her breast. “If the books stay behind, then I stay too.”

  Severance lifted his eyes beseechingly. “I knew I was going to regret this. The Renaissance sinkswamps will freeze before I make a mistake like this again. All right, all right, bring the damn books. But move, will you? I’ve got a hot run, and it’s COD.”

  “What’s that mean?” Cidra asked, hastily placing the books in a travel pack.

  “It means,” Severance said as he locked the pack he had just finished stuffing with delicate clothing, “that I don’t get paid unless the shipment gets delivered on time. Credit on Delivery. I don’t intend to make the run to Renaissance for free, so let’s get going. Here, you take the robes. They’re a lot lighter. Let me have those damn books. Anything else?”

  “No, that’s everything.” She edged around Scates’s prone body. “You’re sure he’ll be all right?”

  “Unfortunately yes. Now just act normal out in the hall, understand? Pretend you’ve changed your mind about staying here and have agreed to spend the night with me. You’ve paid for the room?”

  Cidra nodded and then asked, “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “What’s true?” Severance closed the door and set the locks. Then he shouldered the travel pack and started down the hall, Cidra following close behind.

  “Wolves think constantly about sex. It’s what that man Scates wanted from me, and it is the excuse you think the hotel security system will accept for our unexpected departure.”

  “By now you ought to have learned for yourself that Wolves aren’t nearly as elevated in their thinking as your friends back home in Clementia.”

  “It’s not a question of refined or elevated thinking,” she responded seriously as he herded her out of the hotel lobby and onto the glowing sidewalk. “It’s a matter of the relative importance of the subject to an individual. Sex is obviously a great deal more important to Wolves than to Harmonics.”

  Severance opened the panel of a waiting runner and stuffed Cidra and her packs inside. Then he slid in beside her and punched in their destination. When he was finished, he leaned back in his characteristic lounging fashion and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe if sex were a little more important to Harmonics, they would be able to increase their birthrate. Everyone knows they don’t produce enough children to keep up their population. If it weren’t for the random occurrence of natural Harmonics among the Wolves, there probably wouldn’t be enough Saints to keep Clementia running.”

  “The system works fine the way it is,” Cidra told him firmly. “It’s good to have the new blood constantly being introduced into the Harmonic society.”

  “If everything is so great in Clementia, what are you doing here?”

  She looked out the runner’s diazite window, staring at the passing town, which had been founded according to a careful plan but had since grown into an eclectic and sprawling mix of architectural styles on meandering streets. The glow from the sidewalks illuminated everything from old, squat buildings fashioned by the early colonists of enduring anthrastone to the newer, gleaming structures built of obsidianite. Both materials had proven plentiful and cheap once the colonists had discovered how to pull them from the heart of the eastern mountains. One adventurous designer had done an entire hotel in the ubiquitous fluoroquartz. It was quite garish and tacky to Cidra’s eyes. But, then, much of the town was. The jumble of styles and materials was visually unsettling when Cidra mentally compared it to the beautiful proportions and harmonies that dominated Clementia’s graceful, simple architecture.

  All this passed before Cidra’s eyes fleetingly, as she gathered her spirits to answer Severance’s question, since he was helping her, she felt she owned him the truth.

  “You don’t understand, Severance,” she finally said quietly. “I can’t go back to Clementia. Not as I am. I don’t belong.”

  Raising a skeptical eyebrow, he turned to her. “A person either is or is not a natural Harmonic,” he pointed out gently. “If you aren’t one, there’s no use fighting it, is there?”

  Her head snapped around, and all the years of grim determination blazed for a moment in her vivid green eyes. “I will find a way to be one of them, Teague Severance, if it takes me to the end of the Stanza Nine star system and beyond. I will find the answer. It’s out there. I know it is. I have traced the legend since childhood, and now, at last, I’m actually going after it.”

  He looked at her blankly. “Going after what? What legend?”

  Cidra bit her lip and
sank back into her corner of the seat. “It’s out there, Severance. The tool with which I can become a Harmonic. The instrument that can fit my mind into the natural patterns and rhythms of everything I see or touch. Maybe it won’t quite duplicate the way a Harmonic’s mind vibrates in tune with whatever it chooses to focus on, but I think it can imitate the telepathic element. I think it can help me bridge the gap that my lack of natural ability has always put between me and the world I was meant to join.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “I have almost all of it, Severance. I have the training, the rituals, the education. I have studied the Klinian Laws and the Rules of Serenity as the most devout of students. All I lack is the ability to achieve communion with the others and that intuitive element that makes the Harmonic mind so unique. But I’ll get it. Or something almost as good. I swear I will.”

  The silence in the runner seemed frozen as Severance regarded her taut features. Finally he said, “That’s why you want to ship out with me? You’re searching for a legend?”

  She nodded once, sharply, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. “A Ghost legend.”

  “Ah, Cidra. There are a million Ghost legends. All of them created by humans after they reached Stanza Nine and found all that junk lying around on Lovelady and Renaissance.”

  “It’s not junk! We’re talking about the artifacts of a vanished civilization. And this legend is based on one of those artifacts. I found too many hints of it in the Archives. The tool is out there somewhere, and I’m going to find it.” She shook her head wonderingly. “How can you call the artifacts junk?”

  Severance’s mouth curved wryly. “I’m sure that when they originally encountered the Ghost ruins, the First Families were suitably startled. But that was a couple hundred years ago, and when everyone realized how common the leftover Ghost garbage was, the novelty wore off. Even the Harmonics who are archaeologists are interested in only the most unusual finds. They don’t want to be bothered anymore with every little shard or carving that turns up. If Stanza Nine ever attracts any tourists, we’ll all make a fortune selling Ghost junk, but until then, it’s practically worthless. The legends are even more worthless. We invented them. Every company explorer who ever had a bad dream while camped out on Renaissance has a new so-called legend. And the miners on QED are just as bad. Hell, for that matter there is still enough unexplored territory right here on Lovelady to breed tales. If you’re chasing a legend, Cidra, you’re chasing moonlight.”