Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 4 Read online

"Don't make you what?" he yells. "The mighty Digger, everybody's hero, big TV star! Try signing autographs without any arms!"

  "I mean it, Pierce," I say. "I took it easy on you a second ago, because I didn't want to kill you."

  "Right, but you're helpless now," he says. "Can't jump, can't punch. What can you do?"

  "You ever see 'Voltron?'"

  "What?" he asks.

  "The Japanese cartoon," I say. "Or 'Robotech?' 'Starblazers?' 'Power Rangers' maybe?"

  "What, are you just rubbing it in, now?" he asks. "Everybody's got a cartoon but me?"

  "No, I'm just saying, these guys, every week they would fight somebody. And every week, the bad guys would be kicking their ass, until they pulled out their big ultimate weapon. The Blazing Sword. The Wave Motion Gun. And after a while, you just had to wonder, why do they bother fighting normally at all? Why not just fire the Wave Motion Gun the instant a bad guy sticks his head out of a hole?"

  "Hello. It was a show. They had time to fill."

  "Yeah, but you want to think that the character has some kind of reason. The best I could figure was, they were always trying to hold something in reserve. If your enemy knows the most extreme thing you can do, he can plan a way to counter it. But if you've got some ability that he doesn't know about, he'll underestimate you and you can beat him."

  "So what?" Pierce yells.

  "So quit now, so I don't have to use my Wave Motion Gun on your ass," I say.

  Pierce hesitates for a second, then barks out a single laugh. "You don't have any 'Wave Motion Gun,'" he says. "And even if you did, I'd be able to counter it next time."

  "That's the other thing about Wave Motion Guns," I say. "They're lethal. One shot, instant destruction. They have to be, so the bad guys can't get a second chance."

  "You're bluffing," he says.

  "Throw that glass and find out," I say.

  He looks down at it, blinks at the sight of blood on his hands. He's been gripping the glass so hard, it's cut into his fingers. "Crap. Would you look at that? Fingers are all slippery. Couldn't kill you if I wanted to." He lets the glass slip from his fingers to shatter on the floor.

  Later, after the cops have taken Pierce away, and I've signed Snot-Nose Kenyon's picture before he rode off in the ambulance with his mom, I'm standing with Fleming at the mall entrance. My wounds have been cleaned and dressed. The ambulance guys wanted to take me to the hospital, but I said no. I heal up pretty fast. "I think I'm going to get a beer," I say. "Want to come?"

  "No," she says. "I've got a conference call waiting. You made a big mess here. The company has to reevaluate our relationship with you."

  I nod. I expected as much. "Okay, see you later." I turn to walk away.

  "Hey, Digger," she says.

  I stop and look back at her.

  "That stuff you said, about Japanese cartoons and your secret weapon. Was that true, or was it just a bluff?"

  "What do you think?" I ask.

  "I think it was a bluff," she says. "But if it were true, I thought it might make a good twist to add to your show, you know?"

  "Yeah, that's a way to keep a secret," I say. "Put it on a top-rated TV show."

  "Yeah, but it's a kid's show where the real hero's a dog," Fleming says. "No one would take it seriously. I just, I want to know because you were kind of staking all our lives on it. So, is it true?"

  "Call me if you change your mind about the beer," I say as I turn and walk away. Maybe now I have a string to pull with Playco, after all.

  Misfits

  Written by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Illustrated by Paul Davies

  Day 54, Standard Year 1393

  Solcintra, Liad

  It was a pellucid, temperate morning. The humidity levels were just a point lower than the theoretical "perfect comfort" zone; the sky was an arcing blue-green bowl marred by neither cloud nor threat of rain. It was, in fact, a fine day for gardening.

  As were so many days on Liad.

  The gardener was early at his work, having risen betimes from restless, unsettling dreams, and knowing from long experience that laboring in the clan's inner gardens was a potent cure for restlessness. Granted, the work no longer exhausted him to the point of dreamlessness, for which he had only himself to thank. Nine standards gone, the inner gardens had been a jungle of neglect and ill-considered plantings. Now . . . he flattered himself that it was an oasis, a place of peace and beauty to soothe the spirit and calm the emotions.

  To create such a place, that was certainly, he thought as he turned from the portable weather station he had mounted on the garden wall—certainly such a place was of value to the clan.

  As he was not, nor ever had been.

  An embarrassment to the clan—oh, yes. Many times over; the transgression which had made him gardener under what Terrans so quaintly styled "house arrest," merely the last in the series of embarrassments that had begun with his birth and naming.

  That he was also the instrument of the clan's continued financial comfort—well, that was an embarrassment, too.

  He took up his hoe and walked to the bottom of the garden, where the pesselberries wanted his attention. A small flock of foraging redbirds flew as far as the garden wall, complaints loud and urgent. One, braver than the rest, held position until the gardener was nearly upon him, and then joined his crew. Within moments their song was back to the constant low twitter he'd become accustomed to.

  It was hardly his fault that Clan Lysta had once been on the verge of financial ruin, or that a mad Terran had wanted a ship. Not any ship, but a good ship, a Liaden-built ship, with up-to-date cans and mount points and drives, and—Korval's ships then as now being pre-bought a dozen or more years in advance—his only choice was to buy from Cochel lo'Vanna, whose clan refused to sell to any but a member of a registered clan.

  The madman—one Thrugood Brunner—was not without resources. He set himself to become a member of a registered clan. He had—perhaps by chance, perhaps by reasoned searching—located Lysta, teetering on the edge of dissolution. He met with the desperate delm, an agreement was reached to publish a new Line; a contract was written, money changed hands—hey, presto! as some Terrans would have it—Lysta was saved. And Thrugood Brunner got his ship, which he soon boarded, never to return to planet or clanhouse.

  But the contract. The contract had established a trust, a certain percentage of which was to be paid into the clan's operating fund every Standard for precisely as long as Line Brunner flourished in the care of Clan Lysta. This to be proven by the existence, in each generation, of a child bearing the surname Brunner and a personal name from the original Brunner's family history, a list of those names being appended to the contract.

  The clan, no longer in debt, found the contract, but not the portion, to be—awkward. By the delm's word, the generational Brunners lived quietly retired, calling no attention to themselves, or to the clan which nurtured them.

  Until recently, that was.

  "Ichliad!" A glad, childish voice interrupted these ruminations.

  He looked up and smiled as Verena rushed down the path, trailed, as ever, by orange Charzi, tail high and whiskers a-quiver.

  "Why are you all the way down here?" the child asked, depositing herself with abandon on the brick walk. The cat came and stood on her knee, then wandered off, as it was wont to do, to explore what new smells might have developed over night. The birds quieted somewhat, but still muttered among the branches.

  "The pesselberries must have their soil aerated, or they will not bear," he answered.

  "That would be a good thing, surely?" she asked. Verena was not fond of pesselberries.

  "Not all of us share your distaste for fresh fruits," he commented, wielding his hoe with a will.

  "Not all fresh fruits," she objected. "Ichliad, let us make a pact! You may have all of my pesselberries, and I will have all of your kelchin fruit."

  He shook his head, a Terran habit he had not been able to break. "You know quit
e well that kelchin fruit are nuts," he said. He gave her a glance. "And so do I."

  She sighed, and squinted up at the sky. "What will the weather be today?"

  "Clear and calm and placid," he answered, hoeing. "The weather on Liad is always placid."

  "Always?"

  "Excepting the occasional tempest along the coasts, yes. We are fortunate in the weather on our homeworld. Others are not nearly so tame."

  Charzi appeared out of the bushes then and Verena was obliged to express her admiration of his beauty and prowess for the next few minutes. Ichliad plied his hoe, the rhythm of the work lulling him into a state almost of sleep—and was roused by the child.

  "Ichliad," she asked, "will you go back to being a weatherman, when the delm is through punishing you?"

  Go back to being a weatherman? he thought, and shook his head once more.

  "Child, I have never stopped being a weatherman."

  "And you're a good one, too!" she said stoutly. "You're never wrong about—"

  Suddenly, unprecedented in this protected place—a down burst of hot, parched wind. The birds went silent. Beneath his feet, the ground shivered.

  "Go!" He threw down his hoe, grabbed the child under her arms and yanked her to her feet. "Run! Into the house!"

  "Charzi!" she objected and he pushed her, not gently, another blast of wind buffeting them, and a rumble building.

  "I'll bring the cat! Go—now!"

  She looked up into his face—and ran.

  * * *

  The news was everywhere, driving even his delm's treasured melant'i plays off the house screens. Clan Korval had struck against the homeworld, opening a hole in the center of Solcintra itself. Ichliad stayed a short time among his horrified kin, then escaped upstairs to his rooms, where his private screen told the same tale over.

  He listened with half an ear to the explanations, the recorded warnings, the speculations as he paced the length and breadth of his quarters, his fingers twisted together as he debated with himself.

  He was an authority—an expert. Unlike most of the meteorologists who studied and graphed the subtle, agreeable weather of the homeworld, he had seen, he had studied—he understood—what would happen next. The winds would carry debris and potentially deadly particles, raining them down on others, so distant from the catastrophe that they would not think of their danger.

  "They must," he whispered, "be warned."

  And by whom? The Scouts? Well, yes. But the Scouts were stretched thin, as he heard the tale told between the sentences of the news reports. There were evacuations, teams sent in to succor the wounded. It would be—days, perhaps, before the Scouts had leisure to think. He—this was his field, and it fell to him to give the warning.

  He paused by the window and gazed down into the inner garden that had been his care and duty for the past nine Standards. The terms of his arrest were plain: he was to remain housebound, communicating with no one, calling no attention to himself, bringing no embarrassment to his house. Manage this for ten Standards, his delm had told him, with an ironic bow that indicated such restraint was doubtful, and his confinement would be ended, his debt to the clan's consequence paid.

  Six Standard months remained until his parole. Freedom was within his reach.

  And yet—

  "They must," he said to the empty room, his voice striking the walls firmly, "be told."

  His knowledge, his expertise . . .

  His duty.

  He had contacts, names. People who would remember him, or at least remember his work. He had only to access the communications module—unlocked, for where was the honor in obedience, if the forbidden were not available as a constant choice?

  Ichliad turned from the window, walked over to the desk, sat down. His fingers moved on the keypad, and there was the screen, the program prompting him for an address.

  Six months to freedom.

  But, really, he was a weatherman. There was no choice.

  * * *

  Research Station Number Measton 4

  Day 198, Standard Year 1382

  "Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three; I. Brunner to Storage Bay Three."

  It took some moments for the noise to become sound, for the sound to become words, for the words to have meaning, for the meaning to have urgency.

  Brunner looked at the remains of his solitary meal—"lunch" this would be by the cryptic schedule on the canteen wall—and realized he was done anyway. Not that the food was bad, but that his mind was far from it, his discovery of yet another bombed-out weather unit filling his thoughts. Someone on the surface was targeting the ground units—that much was certain. Why they would do so, when accurate reporting of the weather was crucial to both—or perhaps he should say, all—sides of the war being waged on the planet below—that was the puzzle.

  Well, that and how he would convince the company this time to send him more units.

  "Brunner to Storage Bay Three. Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three!"

  Sighing, he folded his assigned portable regretfully and slipped it back into its pocket. Somewhere in the latest information might be a key, a pointer, an explanation of the newest weather pattern, the one he'd hoped to pinpoint using the destroyed monitor.

  At least today he'd been able to think and study at lunch. Jack was someplace else.

  Never good with small talk, even among Liadens, Brunner found station-livers to be largely respectful of someone who was working. Still, there was Jacumbra Edgil—"Jack, just call me Jack and everybody'll know who you're talking about!"—who seemed to wander the station talkative and unfettered at all shifts, doing whatever it was that "Jack" did.

  One was warned of Jack's approach by a chorus of subtle clicks, chirps, beeps, and clanks, some of them electronic, some born of the accidental interplay of the objects hung along his several tool belts.

  There were other warnings, as well, if one were so engrossed in one's work that mere sound was disregarded. For instance, Jack was very much not of Liaden size, standing a full head taller than Brunner, carrying at least twice the weight; sometimes he blocked the overhead lights.

  To hear Jack talk, which was difficult to avoid, he was personally responsible for the upkeep of the station and all its systems. How he could manage this while also being present at people's elbows during breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and "canteen cocktails" was hard to imagine. Still, the phrase, "Guess we'd better ask Jack," was said often enough to lend credence to his claims of technical omnipotence.

  "Ichliad Brunner to Storage Bay Three! Code Eleven."

  Well, he thought, picking up his tray, someone was impatient. And Code Eleven, forsooth! He was expecting no visitors, save the Phaetera company rep, whose existence he was coming to doubt. And when had the Scout designated himself as a mere "visitor"?

  He deposited the tray, his thoughts again on the problem of the weather patterns below them. So much unexplained, so much seeming impossible. But there—explanations must exist, revealing what seemed impossible to be merely improbable. That was the hope. It was reason he was here, and why the station was here. Klamath, in its eccentricities, might well demonstrate a key that could unlock the weather patterns of a thousand worlds.

  * * *

  Storage Bay Three was the area reserved for the Scout when he made his frequent and largely unscheduled appearances. What the Scout did when he wasn't on station Brunner neither knew nor cared. When the Scout was on station he dipped his fingers into everything, always asking questions, always being very busy, almost always being annoying, and most often doing all of that in the company of Jack and his clanking tool belts.

  Brunner entered the access hall to Storage Bay Three at his usual brisk pace, ignoring the urge to hurry prompted by yet another iteration of the demand for his appearance. This summons was a disruption of his work, his thought, and his schedule. He was obeying it—gods forefend that he bring the Scout down upon his work area!—but he would not be goaded into rushing. At least he was not like thos
e who let their names echo through the station for a half-shift.

  Ahead, the bay doors were wide open, revealing people, voices, uniforms—and Jack. For a wonder Jack was standing quiet as the Scout and a tall Terran woman dressed in a military uniform peered at something hidden by his bulk.

  "Won't be a cause for trouble, then, for you? I mean political trouble. I don't think these . . ." That was the tall woman.

  Jack saw Brunner, and Brunner saw the small hand-sign he made to the Scout, one of those pilots and Scouts used to communicate in noisy or distracting environments. Brunner thought of the sign as, "Attend, one approaches," but he had never been formally trained in hand-talk, something he greatly regretted. He might have been taught—would have been taught!—had his delm allowed the Scouts to buy his contract when he had been at the Scout Academy's meteorology school. Alas, by the time the offer was made, he had been under contract to the technical services company Phaetera, who had paid for his advanced training.