Lieutenant Ari Rosselin-Metadi crossed the open ground to the Med Station’s Number Two aircar with easy, unhurried strides. A hard rain was falling on the landing field, but only newcomers to the station tried to escape bad weather. Here in Nammerin’s equatorial region, rain fell every day for half the year, and violent storms roared through at least twice a week during the other half. This was the drier-but-stormy season, and the downpour plastered Ari’s thick black hair against his skull.
In the shelter of the aircar, a lean, fair-haired man stood waiting. His uniform was less rain-soaked than Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi’s, but only because there was less of it to get wet. By most standards Nyls Jessan would be considered tall, but Ari was nearly seven feet in height and massively built, with powerful muscles overlying long, heavy bones—the legacy of a paternal grandfather whose name not even Jos Metadi had ever known.
“Our chariot awaits,” said Jessan, with a theatrical flourish toward the aircar’s open door. “We’ve got a civilian casualty requesting an assist at gridposit seven-two-eight-three-four-nine-two-five.”
His speech carried faint traces of a Khesatan drawl. Nobody at Nammerin’s Medical Station could figure out what an aristocrat from the most elegant and civilized of the Central Worlds was doing in the Space Force, and Lieutenant Jessan, in spite of his ready flow of light chatter, had never volunteered the information.
Ari climbed into the waiting aircar. In a few minutes, with Jessan at the controls, they were flying in and out of drifting patches of grey cloud, with the lush vegetation of the equatorial zone spread out beneath them.
Nammerin was a young world, plagued by constantly shifting weather patterns, but the civilized galaxy was hungry and expanding in the aftermath of the war. So—to keep the agricultural machinery on Nammerin’s vast water-grain farms from rusting untended while other worlds went hungry—the Space Force’s medical and disaster relief teams worked overtime on behalf of the planet’s scattered population.
“Well,” said Ari, as soon as they’d leveled out. “What do you think is waiting for us?”
“Could be anything,” said Jessan. “While you were up-country on leave we got three cases of Rogan’s Disease at the walk-in clinic.”
“We shouldn’t be seeing Rogan’s here at all,” protested Ari. “It’s a dry-world problem.”
Jessan shrugged. “We’ve got it anyway, and tholovine’s scarce in this sector. It’s not even part of the standard kit.”
“You can thank the Magelords for that,” Ari told him. “Tholovine was a big part of their combat chemistry. Ever since the war ended and word got out, none of the major supply firms will handle the stuff. The dry worlds make just enough to handle their local problems, and that’s it.”
The Khesatan lieutenant raised an elegant golden eyebrow. “Sounds like you’ve been hitting the journals.”
“I had an interest,” said Ari shortly.
Jessan opened his mouth and then shut it again. The Domina’s murder had rocked the civilized galaxy only a few Standard weeks after Ari first reported for duty on Nammerin. Around the Med Station, by unspoken agreement, the subject was never discussed.
The wind picked up as the aircar continued on. On the ground below, tall trees bent and tossed like stems of grass, and drainage ditches raged like turbulent rivers. Stiff gusts buffeted the craft as it flew.
Ari was the first one to break the silence. “It’s going to be a wild ride coming back.”
Jessan glanced over at him. “Are you trying to talk yourself into a piloting job?”
“Who, me?” Ari contrived to look innocent. “I wouldn’t think of spoiling your fun.”
But to himself, he had to admit that Jessan’s comment had the ring of truth. The Khesatan was a good pilot, one of the Med Station’s best, but Ari was better. Flying, after all, was in his blood. His crazy sister Beka—wherever she was right now—might be better at deep-space piloting, but she’d never cared much for working with the smaller atmospheric craft.
Her loss, thought Ari. Flying’s not really flying if gravity doesn’t have a chance to get you when you ’re careless.
The aircar flew on. Soon a raised concrete strip came into view on the ground below, and Ari abandoned his private thoughts in favor of checking the chart screen.
“That’s our posit, all right,” he said to Jessan. “Looks like a farmer’s landing pad.”
“I bet somebody stuck his hand in a seed hopper again,” replied Jessan absently. Already, the descent was taking most of the Khesatan’s attention. The low-altitude winds appeared determined to push the craft off its approach and land it in the thick, soupy mud surrounding the pad. At last the aircar came to a halt on the concrete surface, and Jessan let out a satisfied sigh. “So far, so good. Now, where do we go from here?”
“Where” turned out to be a nearby line shack, a windowless prefab structure crowded with farm equipment and sacks of seed grain. A pocket glow-cube, set high up on a metal shelf, cast a pitiless white light down onto the floor where a human lay beneath a pile of blankets, sweating and shivering both at once. A hulking, grey-scaled being crouched beside the pallet. The creature rose to its feet as Ari and Jessan walked in.
Just my luck, thought Ari. We’re dealing with a Selvaur. The saurian—a male, from the crest of green scales rising off his domed skull—stood as tall as Ari himself, and bared a predator’s fangs at the two medics. The voice that came from his chest was a deep rumble, speaking not in Galcenian but in a growling, inhuman tongue.
*About time you guys showed up.*
“Sorry,” said Jessan, as he went down on one knee beside the man on the pallet. “We came as fast as we could.”
Most humans on Nammerin had picked up the trick of “hearing” the Selvauran language, since there were almost as many of the big saurians on Nammerin as on the creatures’ home world of Maraghai. Actually speaking the seemingly wordless, rumbling language was another matter—few humans had either the patience or the vocal range to manage the task.
*Sorry’s not the word,* the Selvaur growled in reply to Jessan’s apology. *This human is my sworn brother. If he dies, you die.*
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Jessan, without looking up. He’d already opened the medikit from the aircar, and was working over the ailing man. “Talk some sense into him, will you, Ari?”
“My pleasure,” Ari said. He stepped past the kneeling Jessan to stand in front of the Selvaur. This close, their eyes were on a level. Ari took a deep breath and pushed his voice down to the bottom of its range. *If this man dies, it’s the will of the Forest, and not the work of anyone here.*
The Selvaur’s vertical pupils dilated for a moment in surprise. Then the big saurian recovered his composure. *Who taught you to speak like a Forest Lord, thin-skin?*
*Ferrdacorr son of Rrillikkik taught me the Forest Speech,* Ari said. *He fostered me among his own younglings in the High Ridges, and brought me into his family as a son.*
Again, startlement showed briefly in the Selvaur’s yellow eyes. It wasn’t unknown for a Selvaur and a human to swear blood-brotherhood, but formal adoption was almost unheard of. *Have you gone on the Long Hunt, then, and made your Kill?*
Ari thought of the white scars along his back and ribs, and the double row of white puncture marks in the flesh of his left arm—only part of the price he’d paid to call himself part of Ferrdacorr’s clan. *I have,* he said.
The Selvaur shook his head, a gesture he must have picked up from the humans he worked with on Nammerin. *Ahh.* He looked over at his partner, and then back at Ari. *Will he be all right, now that you’re here?*
*I don’t know yet,* Ari said.
He moved away from the Selvaur, and knelt down beside Jessan. “What have we got?”
Jessan shook his head. “We’ll need the lab work to confirm it, of course—but if this isn’t third-stage Rogan’s I’ll toast my commission and eat it for breakfast.”
“Rogan’s,” said Ari. “Damn.”
The Selvaur made a nervous sound deep in his throat. *Is he going to die?*
*Maybe,* said Ari. It was unbecoming for one Forest Lord to lie to another, even in kindness. *Help us move him to the aircar. If we get him to the hospital, he may have a chance.*
The return trip was every bit as bad as Ari had feared, with the wind picking up, and the sick man shaking with chills and screaming in delirium the whole way. At last, though, they got the farmer checked in and under care, and made their way, wet and muddy, to the Junior Officers’ staff lounge for a cup of hot ghil. Off-worlders found the local drink sludgy and bitter, but like everybody else at the medical station, Ari had been on Nammerin so long the stuff was beginning to taste good.
The staff lounge was a converted storage dome, furnished with a half-dozen stackable chairs and a lumpy couch that someone had picked up secondhand at a flood sale. A holoset stood in the center of the dome atop its packing crate. Jessan clicked on the set, and the latest episode of “Spaceways Patrol” flickered into view, its colors dulled and its outlines fuzzied by atmospherics.
Ari sat back on the couch and gave his mug a gentle shake before taking the first sip—ghil was warming and filling and a natural stimulant, but it did tend to leave sediment in the bottom of your cup.
“Rogan’s Disease,” he said. “What next?”
“You never can tell on this planet,” said Jessan. “The week after I got here—two years ago this LastDay morning, but who’s counting?—the CO’s pet sand snake got mildew. Had to freeze-dry the beast to kill the stuff.”
“Wouldn’t that kill the sand snake, too?” asked Ari. You never could tell about Jessan’s wild stories. He told them all with the same straight face, and it was usually the unlikely ones that turned out to be true.
“Oh, no,” said Jessan, shaking his head. “Just sent it into premature hibernation.”
“And then, I’ll bet,” said a woman’s unfamiliar voice from the doorway, “he had to put it under the ultraviolets to reset its clock. Come on, Jessan, tell us another one.”
Ari rose, ducking out of habit even though the lounge’s ceiling provided ample headroom, and turned toward the door. He saw a human female of about his own age, a small, plain-featured person whose thick black hair was twisted up into a knot at the back of her head. She wore a Medical Service uniform without insignia.
“Gentlelady,” Ari began, and then saw the polished wooden staff slung across her back on a leather cord. “Mistress,” he corrected himself.
Jessan chuckled. “Llannat, this is Ari Rosselin-Metadi. Ari, this is what else showed up while you were gone—Llannat Hyfid, our brand-new Adept. She’s my relief.”
Ari gave her the full Entiboran bow of respect, just as his mother had taught him years ago. “Mistress Hyfid.”
She made a face. “Call me ‘Llannat,’ please. I’m from Maraghai, and the ‘Mistress’ bit makes me uncomfortable.”
There weren’t a lot of humans living on Maraghai, but the Selvauran distaste for human ranks and titles tended to rub off on the few who did. Ari looked at Llannat with a bit more interest. *Do you understand Forest Speech?* he asked.
The answering smile lit up the young woman’s dark, bony features like a lantern on a cloudy night. “Oh, yes—but I can’t manage two words of it without having a sore throat for a whole day afterward. How did you learn it so well?”
“There was a Selvaur who knew my father during the Magewar,” said Ari. “I was fostered with him on Maraghai. It was part of some agreement he and my father made before I was born, back when my father talked the Selvaurs into joining the fight.”
Ari watched Llannat Hyfid putting the pieces together as he spoke. “That’s right,” he told her, “Rosselin-Metadi as in the late Domina and the Commanding General. And you probably know my brother Owen—he’s an apprentice in the Guild. Me, I’m about as sensitive as a brick.”
“He has the manners of one sometimes, too,” said Jessan. “It comes from talking with too many holovid reporters.”
“You probably wondered,” said Ari, “why I took my leave here on Nammerin instead of going home. I’ll tell you why—Galcen probably has more holovid cameras than this planet has water-grain seeds.”
“I still call it a waste of good leave time, roughing it in the backwoods on this quaking mudball,” said Jessan. “But there’s no accounting for taste. Speaking of roughing it—I finally got my orders this morning, and do you know where they’re sending me next?”
“No,” said Ari, smiling a little. “Where?”
“Pleyver,” said Jessan. “Flatlands Portcity.”
Ari whistled. Flatlands wasn’t Waycross, but the Pleyveran port had been wide open enough in the bad old days to serve as one of his father’s best ports of call. “I didn’t know Space Force had a station there.”
“We don’t,” said Llannat. “Don’t listen to his griping, Ari—they’re making him a lieutenant commander and putting him in charge of setting a place up.”
“So I can spend my time in a one-man office treating stranded spacers for social diseases,” said Jessan. “It’ll be a picnic, I can tell you.”
“Life around here isn’t exactly going to be a tea party either,” said Llannat. “Four cases of Rogan’s Disease just came in from a logging camp upriver.”
“Four?” said Ari. “Plus the three we’ve got and the one we brought in . . . that’s more than just a fluke. It’s an outbreak.”
Llannat nodded. “One of the old cases died while you were collecting the latest one. And without any tholovine, we’re going to lose some more.”
“Didn’t anybody put in a request for some?”
“I did,” said Jessan. “As soon as the first case showed up. But you know how it works: Supply can hurry things up, you might see some tholovine before next flood season. And by then it’ll be too late.”
“Too bad we don’t have some right now,” Ari said. “We could handle the problem while it’s still small.”
“And if I had hyperspace engines,” said Llannat, “I’d be a starship. Where are we supposed to get the stuff—on the black market?”
There was a silence. Ari and Jessan looked at one another.
“Munngralla,” said Ari.
“Right,” Jessan said. “If anybody can get it, he can.”
“Wait a minute,” Llannat cut in. “Who’s Munngralla?”
“He’s a Selvaur who runs a curio shop down in Namport,” said Ari. “At least, that’s what he does officially. Unofficially . . . rumor says he’s the local Quincunx rep.”
“I see,” said Llannat. If the Adept had any qualms about dealing with the most notorious organization of smugglers and black marketeers in the civilized galaxy, she didn’t show it. “But is he likely to have tholovine on hand?”
“You name it,” Ari said, “and Munngralla will sell it. But not for decimal-credit prices.”
“Never mind the price,” Jessan said. “We can always find cash someplace. The question is, how do we get in touch with him? If he thinks we’re working for Security, he won’t take the job no matter how much we offer.”
Another long silence. Then Llannat looked over at Ari. “You did say he was a Selvaur . . . .”
Ari sighed. “This sounds like something the CO doesn’t want to know about.”
Jessan nodded. “He’d just worry.”
The things I do for the Service, Ari thought, as the duck-boards laid across the intersection buckled under his feet and then pulled free of the mud in a series of sucking noises.
After yesterday’s rains, the town of Namport lay steaming under the late-afternoon sun. A smell of decaying vegetation and other unwholesome substances rose from the muddy streets. Like most of the roads in this lowland agricultural district, the thoroughfares of Namport were unpaved. The shaggy tusker-oxen used as draft animals by the small farmers didn’t care for hard surfaces, and nullgrav-assisted vehicles didn’t need them; so when wet weather came to Namport, foot traffic was left with mud on its boots.
Ari stepped off the duckboards onto the raised wooden sidewalk. He’d worn civilian clothing for this expedition—a dark shirt over uniform trousers and boots—and a glance at his reflection in a shop window showed a looming, piratical figure. A heavy Ogre Mark VI blaster completed the effect.
The Mark VI had been Jos Metadi’s, back in the days when the General still carried a sidearm openly instead of hiding one up his sleeve. When Ari left Galcen to join the Space Force, the blaster had gone with him—“for luck,” his father had said, although Ari had never needed to wear it until today.
Halfway down the block, Ari spotted the sign he was looking for: five points imports, g. munngralla, prop.
G. Munngralla, Prop. hadn’t wasted valuable credits on a holosign; the words were spelled out in fading gold paint on the shop awning over the sidewalk. When Ari reached the door of the shop, he saw that the same legend had been painted on the glass of door and window, along with a stylized depiction of a five-planet star system.
Ari knew as well as anybody else that Nammerm was the fourth planet out in a ten-planet system. He smiled at the sight of the design. So far, so good.
He pushed the door open—no fancy sliding doors with body-heat sensors for Munngralla, just ordinary cheap metal hinges, in need of a good oiling—and stepped inside. The air in the shop was cool and dry: Selvaur-cool, which made it two-shirts-and-a-jacket weather for a human. After the muggy heat of downtown Namport, Ari found it hard to keep his teeth from chattering.
He shouldered his way past a rack of pugil sticks and a pallet-load of boxes labeled “genuine Entiboran fused-rock paperweights—certificate of authenticity included,” and came up against a Changwe temple gong bearing a hand-lettered sign in Maraghite script: please ring for service. There was no mallet in sight.
Carrying it a bit far, aren’t you? Ari asked the absent Munngralla. How many humans can read Maraghite in the first place? I’m lucky Ferrda took the time to be thorough with his responsibilities. And as for your missing mallet . . .
He pulled his right arm back a little and struck the heavy cast metal ball with the side of one large and solid fist. The bell gave voice.
A single deep note tolled through the shop like a moan. A small grey lizard, frightened by the sound, ran out from behind a shelf of jars and into a crack in the wall. In the display cases, frangible items vibrated against one another on the glass shelves, setting up a high, brittle tinkling.
Ari struck the gong again.
*All right, all right. Let an old wrinkleskin get his midday sleep, why don’t you?*
G. Munngralla—two meters and then some of not even slightly wrinkled Selvaur—pushed his way through the beaded curtain separating the back of the shop from the storefront.
Ari grinned at him, making sure to bare his canine teeth. *You’re no wrinkleskin—and since when do the Masters of the Forest sleep in midday like animals?*
*Who are you calling “animal,” thin-skin?* growled the shopkeeper. Selvaurs didn’t like that name any better than other sentients did, and they took insults worse than some—Ferrdacorr would have knocked Ari across the room for showing such bad manners, and Munngralla might try yet.
But Ari stood tall enough in his spaceboots to meet Munngralla’s bad-tempered glare straight on, and at a guess had a handspan more breadth in the shoulders. He hooked his thumbs into his belt, braced his feet, and held the predatory grin.
“I rang,” he said. “I have some business to discuss.”
*It’s all for sale,* said Munngralla.
Ari’s lip curled. “I don’t need a pugil stick today, thank you. And as for the Entiboran paperweights—there’s enough of them floating around the galaxy to build a whole new planet. Someday, though, you’re going to get a real Entiboran in here, and he’s going to wreck the place for you.”
*Ask me if I’m worried,* said Munngralla. *Do I look worried?*
“Do I look like a Security Officer?” countered Ari. Then, switching languages again: *Do I sound like a Security officer?*
The Selvaur narrowed his eyes at him. *Talk is cheap, thin-skin. Can a Forest Lord or a Brother vouch for you?*
*Ferrdacorr son of Rrillikkik,* said Ari. *He hunts the South Continent High Ridges these days, but he went after other prey during the great war against the Mageworlds.*
*Ahh,* said the Selvaur. *That Ferrdacorr. If he answers for you, we shouldn’t have any trouble doing business.*
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Ari, in Galcenian again. “The Forest Speech isn’t for thin-skinned throats.”
*That’s true,* agreed Munngralla. *Now, which will you have—a service, or merchandise?*
“Tholovine,” said Ari. “In quantity, in a hurry.”
*If you’re after chemical weapons, I carry some already made up,* said the Selvaur. *No need to risk synthesizing your own.*
Ari bared his teeth—in real anger, this time. “If I ever need to hurt someone that badly, I’ll beat him to death with my bare hands,” he said. “It’s just as quick and whole lot cleaner.”
*Suit yourself,* said Munngralla. *How do you want your tholovine—powder, elixir, or pressurized spray?*
“Pure brick. Hospital grade.”
*Who’s paying?*
“Me,” said Ari. “Come on, even an unblooded youngling knows better than to ask that. I’m good for the money.”
Munngralla looked at him a moment. *Will Ferrdacorr pay if you default?*
Ari nodded, and dropped again into the Forest Speech. *I’m family. He’ll pay.*
Munngralla extended a scaly hand—another human gesture. *Then we have a deal. I can have the first delivery for you by midnight tonight.*
“What’s the price?”
*Eight hundred credits the brick.*
Ari pulled his own hand back. “No deal. The stuff’s not illegal; just hard to get. Five hundred, or I go someplace else to do business.”
*Seven hundred.*
“Six.”
*Six-fifty—take it or see where going someplace else gets you on this planet.*
“Six-fifty,” agreed Ari, and this time he didn’t pull away from Mungralla’s grip. “We have a deal.”
*Be here at midnight,* the Selvaur reminded him. *And bring cash.*
“I’ll be here,” said Ari; and then—because Ferrdacorr had taught him courteous behavior—added in Selvauran, *Good hunting.*
Munngralla gave him a growled *Good hunting* in reply, but Ari was already halfway to the door. It swung open as he came near, and Ari had to retreat into the rack of pugil sticks to miss knocking over the Selvaur’s next customer. The man glared up at him in passing.
“Sorry,” said Ari, with a shrug. “I couldn’t see the door through all those boxes of rock.”
The man glared harder, and Ari braced himself for an unpleasant scene. But the stranger never made whatever retort he’d been planning to deliver. Instead, the pupils of his eyes dilated, his mouth snapped shut, and he ducked past Ari without a word.
Fear? wondered Ari. But he didn’t think so—that hadn’t been the look of someone who’d managed to lose his temper first and notice the other man’s size afterward.
Not fear, then. Recognition?
He’d never seen the stranger before in his life; but he was not, he knew, a difficult figure to describe, and he’d been in and about Namport often enough on Med Station business.
Probably one of Munngralla’s other customers, Ari decided. I wonder what he was after, if spotting somebody from the Space Force was enough to set hint on edge like that?
On second thought, I probably don’t want to know.