Shadowline-The Starfishers Trilogy I Read online

  Mouse's guts twisted into a painful little knot.

  Storm turned his back on Dee. He whispered, "Cassius, just confine him on one of the manned outstations. Officially, he never arrived. Pass the word."

  "This won't buy more than a month," Cassius replied. "Richard is damned mad. And the Blake outfit is touchy about its people."

  Mouse sighed. His father was not a monster after all.

  "They'll be realistic. They want us bad. Let's stall and up their ante. I want a seat on their board and a percentage of their take on the Shadowline thing."

  "You trying to price us out of the market?"

  "I don't think I can. Keep an eye on the twins. We don't need any more of their crap."

  "Uhn." Cassius followed the Darkswords and their victim.

  Storm departed a moment later. He left his son Thurston, the warhounds, and the ravenshrikes to watch Michael Dee.

  His eye narrowed in anger as he brushed by Mouse. He took a hitch-step, as if considering leaving his son with a few choice words about obedience. He changed his mind, resumed his angry stalk. Mouse's failure to return to Academy was the least of his problems.

  Mouse sighed. There would be time for the idea to grow on his father. Time for Cassius to argue his case.

  He watched his father leave, frowning. What now? Pollyanna had fled along that corridor a moment ago. Why would his father be following her?

  Seventeen: 2844 AD

  The old man's name was Jackson, but Deeth had to call him master. He was an outcast even among the descendants of escaped and discarded slaves. He lived in a fetid cave three miles from the animal village. He had parlayed a few sleight-of-hand tricks and a sketchy medical knowledge into a witch-doctor's career. His insane temper and magic were held in awe by his client-victims, who were an utterly mean, degenerate people themselves.

  In less than a week Deeth knew that Jackson was a thorough fraud, that he was nothing but a lonely old man enraged by a world he believed had used him ill. His career was an attempt to get back. He was a sad, weak, pathetic creature, incontestably mad, and in his madness was utterly ruthless. Hardly a day passed when he did not torture Deeth for some fancied insult.

  He brewed a foul grain beer in the rear of his cave. There were hundreds of gallons in storage or process. Deeth had to keep a full mug ready at all times. Inevitably, Jackson was partially drunk. That did nothing to dampen his free-wheeling temper. But what Deeth found most repulsive were Jackson's hygienic standards.

  He came near retching often that first week. The old man refused to do more than stand and aim aside when he voided his bladder. He never bathed. The cave was more fetid than any animal's den.

  He kept Deeth on a ten-foot leash knotted to choke at a tug. The boy soon learned that chokings had nothing to do with his efforts to please or displease. The old man yanked when he felt a need for amusement.

  For him the sight of a small boy strangling was the height of entertainment.

  Having identified a breakdown between cause and effect, Deeth abandoned efforts to satisfy Jackson. He did what he had to, and spent the rest of his time in sullen thought or quick theft.

  Jackson made no effort to feed him. Indeed, he flew into a rage whenever he caught the boy pilfering from their meager larder. Nearly every meal cost Deeth a choking or beating.

  He learned to endure in Jackson's cruel school. He began to learn the meaning of his father's and Rhafu's admonitions about taking the long view, about thinking before acting.

  His initial lesson was the most painful, degrading, and effective. It came as the result of his first ill-considered attempt at flight, undertaken in sheer animal need to escape an intolerable situation.

  His third night in the cave, after he had recovered from the immediate trauma of the station's destruction, but before he had become accustomed to maltreatment by the old man, he remained awake long after Jackson sent him whining to the moldy leaf pile designated as his bed. Jackson, seated in a rude homemade chair, drank and drank and eventually appeared to slip away into drunken sleep.

  And Deeth waited, forcing himself to lie still despite a heart-pounding eagerness to be away. Hours trooped by in regiments. The last tiny flames of the cookfire died, leaving a small mound of nervously glowing embers.

  He rose quickly, quietly, tried to untie the knot at his neck. His shaking fingers would not cooperate. He could not work a single loop of the tangle free. He crept softly to the old man's chair. The nether end of his leash was knotted around its leg.

  The smaller knot, though only a simple clove hitch, defied him for several minutes. Jackson's proximity petrified him. His fingers became rigid, shaking prods.

  He kept reminding himself that Rhafu had gone raiding at his age, that he was the first-born son of a Head, that he was heir-apparent to one of the oldest and greatest Families. He should have more courage than a common, possessionless Sangaree hireman. He made a litany of it, running it over and over in his mind.

  On Homeworld he had been taught to give fear a concrete character, to make it an object to be fought. His choice of object was obvious. The old man was such a malign presence, so filled with evil promise . . .

  The knot came free. He sprinted for the cave mouth. The rope trailed . . .

  The loop around his throat jerked tight, cut off his wind, and snapped him to a halt. He went down, clawing wildly at his neck.

  Jackson, good foot firm on the line, cackled madly. He seized a cane and began beating Deeth, pausing to jerk the neck loop tight whenever Deeth worked it loose enough to gasp.

  Jackson's amusement and strength finally faded. He tied Deeth's wrists together and passed the rope through a natural grommet in the cave roof. Up the boy went.

  He hung like a punching bag for two long days. Jackson subjected him to every torment his dim mind could imagine, including a foul wanting-to-be-loved, ineffectual homosexual pederasty. And through all those endless hours he whined, "Thought you'd leave poor old Jackson here alone, eh? You Sangaree whelp, don't you know you can't outwit a real man?"

  Deeth was petrified. How could the old man know?

  Eventually he would learn that Jackson was a reject slave who had understood his frightened outburst the night of his capture.

  Through the pain and despair came the knowledge that he would have to degrade himself further to survive. He had to ingratiate himself lest the old man reveal his origins in the village.

  When Jackson performed a kindness it was for profit or by oversight. Whichever applied, he never mentioned Deeth's background.

  Hanging, aching, despairing, Deeth had time to reflect on the teachings of his elders. He began to understand the meaning of patience.

  The old man did not break him. Maybe Deeth did not crack because the idea was too alien. He could not do what he did not know how to do.

  On Homeworld they had a saying, "He's Sangaree." It meant, "He's a real man," only more so. It had overtones of unyielding determination and absolute inflexibility.

  Deeth was Sangaree.

  The old man tired of abusing him. He let Deeth down, seized him by the hair, hurled him into his pile of leaves. After an admonitory cane whack he bound Deeth's hands behind him and secured the nether end of the rope to the grommet, above Deeth's reach. Then he resumed his residence in his chair, chuckling into his filthy beard.

  Deeth lay awake night after night, nursing his hatred and wounded ego. He nurtured his patience and determination to have his revenge.

  Eighteen: 3031 AD

  "Gneaus!" Pollyanna spoke his name breathily. "You've been avoiding me."

  "Not really. I've had work to do."

  Every curve of the woman, every patch of soft, smooth skin, bespoke sexual craving. She had that look of constant need seen only in young women in love and the most polished of prostitutes. Like the hookers', her eyes became vacant, cool, and snakelike when she was off stage. She posed, one hip thrown out model fashion. Her breath came in quick little gasps.

  He was
not playing the game today. "I want to hear all about your travels, little lady." He opened the door to her apartment. She tried the close, casual brush-past going in. He answered it with deliberate chill. A ghost of apprehension crossed her too beautiful face.

  She pushed herself at him as soon as he shut the door.

  Her pelvis moved against him. "I missed you. All of you. And the Fortress. But especially you, Gneaus. Nobody makes me feel the way you do."

  "Sit down," he ordered. She backed away, more apprehensive. "Let's hear the story."

  There were few men Pollyanna could not bedazzle and manipulate. Hawksblood. Cassius, who made her blood run chill. The Darkswords. And, she had learned the hard way, Michael Dee. But Storm . . . He had always been so amenable. He must have been using her when she thought she was using him. Her ego was bruised and aching from traveling with Dee. It was not ready for another blow.

  Storm was positively grim.

  These invulnerables were all old, old men from whom time and experience had leached all innocence, had abraded all boyish vulnerability. There was a darkness in them, a capital wickedness. It called out to the darknesses in her own soul. Their black flames reached out and pulled her like a candle pulled a moth. She was afraid.

  "I didn't mean for anybody to get hurt, Gneaus! Honest. I just wanted to meet Richard Hawksblood."

  "This is no nursery school, Pollyanna. This isn't polite society. We play by the rough rules. We had trouble enough without your meddling. Your actions can't be separated from ours. You're family. Richard won't grant you absolution because you're a nitwit. You've caused deaths that can't be recalled. Death breeds death. God only knows how many men are going to die because of you."

  It was his fault too, he knew. He should have written her off. He should not have tracked Michael to The Big Rock Candy Mountain. But similar logic could be used to assign blame to Michael, Richard, and Lucifer. No, primary responsibility had to remain Pollyanna's. Hers had been the initiating decision.

  "Tell me everything, Pollyanna. I don't want anything added. I don't want anything left out. I don't want you adjusting anything to make yourself look a little better. I just want straight facts. I want, verbatim, including descriptions of tones of voice and expressions, everything you heard discussed. Especially between Richard and Michael, and anybody they talked with. About anything. There's just a ghost of a chance we can still get out of this, or at least tone it down."

  "That would take hours." She turned on the tears. Storm ignored them. Pollyanna interacted with reality through a studied repertoire of poses and roles. The real Miss Eight hid out somewhere way off stage, directing the play, pushing the buttons for whatever response seemed appropriate.

  "I've bought time." The stricken face of the Blackworlder ghosted through his thoughts. The man had not doubted his fate for one instant. "I need to buy more."

  She turned the tears off as quickly as she had switched them on. She began talking in a small, soft voice devoid of editorialization and emotion. She began at the beginning and told nothing but the bitter truth about everything except her motives.

  She had seduced Dee and talked him into taking her to Old Earth with him. She now believed he had acquiesced for his own reasons. Their stay on the mother-world had been dull. The one thing that had impressed her had been the poverty of that gutted, overcrowded planet. Michael had been upset because the holonets had not been interested in his coverage of the action on The Broken Wings.

  "From Old Earth we went to Blackworld. He kept me locked in the ship while we were there. The only reason I found out was he talked in his sleep. He wouldn't say squat when he was awake. He was worried and scared. Things weren't going right, somehow. He was a little paranoid, like he was afraid somebody might be after him but he wasn't really sure. After Blackworld we went to see Richard Hawksblood. He isn't such a big deal in person, is he?"

  She had not been allowed to approach Dee and Hawksblood most of the time. She did know they were talking about Blackworld. What little she knew she had learned from Richard's underlings.

  Then Michael had vanished. No one knew where he had gone. Some thought Tregorgarth, some thought The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

  "It was The Mountain, Polly. Go ahead. You're doing great so far."

  "I had to hang around and wait. It was boring. I hardly ever saw Hawksblood. He was working on the Blackworld project. I never realized how complicated your work is. You don't just jump in the ring like a boxer, do you?"

  Storm smiled the weakest of smiles. If nothing else, Pollyanna had confirmed his intelligence about Richard. Hawksblood was in on Blackworld for sure.

  "It was two months before Michael came back. That was a couple of weeks ago. He was really happy. Before, when his tapes were turned down and he thought somebody was after him, you couldn't hardly live with him. All he said was that he saw the man and everything was all right. He wouldn't even talk in his sleep."

  Who? Storm wondered. Not him. Who else had been on The Big Rock Candy Mountain? Why had Michael been there, anyway?

  "He was back about a week when he grabbed me and that yacht and took off for here. Every couple of days he locked me out of Command. Whenever he let me back in the instel set was warm. I don't know who he was talking to. Then we got here. And the rest you know."

  And the rest he knew.

  He checked the time. Her tale had taken an hour to tell. He had a few questions. He doubted she could answer them.

  Pollyanna, he thought, was one hell of a puzzle. She was all surface and no depth. Even when you bedded a stranger she took on some kind of shape as bits and pieces of bed talk jigsawed together. But not pretty Pollyanna. She remained strictly one-dimensional. Her only real attributes seemed to be her beauty and her vagina, and her devotion to both. She had rebuilt her makeup while she talked.

  She was a damned android built for modeling and screwing! You could penetrate her body, but not her façade.

  Even Lucifer was baffled by her. She seemed to exist solely to be appreciated for her beauty, like a classic painting or cherished poem. Curious.

  He had not thought much about Pollyanna before. She was like that painting. There to be enjoyed and otherwise ignored. It was time to start poking around, back in the silly shadows.

  He would have to unravel her by reversing the usual process, by what he did not know.

  Pollyanna had made a second point clear. The Blackworld affair was deeper than he had suspected. A potential mercantile war over trillions worth of radioactives did not excite Michael. Pollyanna said he seemed indifferent to the opportunity to tape the conflict. It was important to him for some other reason.

  It had to be the Game.

  That was Dee's label for the feud he had been engineering between Hawksblood and Storm. He did not know Storm knew that. The Game's goal appeared to be mutual annihilation. It had been going on since the founding of the two freecorps.

  Storm still could not understand why.

  He bullied Pollyanna. "Who did Michael see on The Big Rock Candy Mountain? Why?" The answer had to be important.

  Pollyanna did not have it.

  "Ah, damn. Damn." He let her kiss him once, then gently disengaged and departed. He returned to his study, put Cassius on call, and turned to Ecclesiastes. He found no solace there. The frenetic, helter-skelter flitting of his mind kept him from following the printed words. He tried the clarinet.

  The soul-trying days had come.

  Cassius listened without being noticed. "I've never heard you play so mournfully, Gneaus," he said.

  Startled, Storm replied, "It's a dirge. I think we've reached the end. I grilled Pollyanna. She's a good observer. You wouldn't figure it considering how vacuum-brained she acts."

  "I've sometimes wondered about that."

  "You too? Then it's not my imagination. Could anybody be that shallow without working at it?"

  "Possibly. Then again, a preoccupation with sexual encounter would make a mask few men, being egoists, would car
e to lift. You wanted me?"

  Storm made a mental note to ask Frieda and his daughter for the woman's view of Miss Eight. "We're getting old, you and I. We're in our sundown days. Things are slipping past us. It's like we're caught in some backwater of time."

  Cassius raised an eyebrow. Storm had difficulty expressing his feelings.

  "We're on the verge of the nightfall of the Legion. Maybe of all the freecorps. I think we'll be both cause and effect of our own destruction, and I can't see any way out."

  "As long as there are corporations and rich men who need us, and who won't be intimidated by the government, there'll be work for us."

  "Time's catching up with us. Confederation is starting to flex its muscles. It's a historical process. It's inevitable. Democratic control and government regulation are coming on faster than the frontiers are moving out. They're about to catch up with us."

  "You're too much the pessimist."

  "Consider the past, Cassius. The block vote of pestholes like Old Earth will devour the capital approach. It's an old story. Goes all the way back to Rome. Why do something for yourself if all you have to do is vote for a guy who'll rob somebody else and do it for you?"

  Storm's bitterness surprised him. He had not been aware of the strength of his own feelings.

  He told Cassius what he had learned from Pollyanna.

  "What do you suggest we do?"

  "First, secure Dee here. Things will move slower if he's tied down. Have Thurston handle that. He doesn't have the imagination to be taken in by Michael. You go to The Mountain. Take Mouse. You won't send him back to Academy, and you tell me he's interested in intelligence work. The two of you, find out who Michael met there. Keep an eye out for Seth-Infinite."

  "You're softer than you pretend, my friend."

  Storm shrugged. "Ship him home if he gets in the way. Tell Wulf and Helmut to start getting ready for Blackworld."

  "Why?"

  "Looks like we'll end up there, like it or not. We ought to be in shape. Oh. Have the older sergeants think up jobs for Benjamin and Homer. We've got to keep them out of trouble. Lucifer I want to backtrack his damned bubble-brained wife. All the way to the place where she was born. Got it?"