Mindworlds Read online

  “But it is all the same business,” the Lyhhrt said.

  “I can see that it is a dangerous one,” Hasso muttered, :when that land can be used for a staging area if the Fields were to be attacked … I must keep my skin well away from Gorodek.:

  And the woman he will marry. But he could not stop himself from yearning for a touch of that mind once again. :But how Gorodek is connected to Lyhrrt only you can tell me.:

  “I know nothing to tell you now, Archivist, but I would like to stay near you for a while because I am frightened, as you have already noticed.”

  Lightning cracked the clouds and the rain beat down on the awnings like stones, and splashed into the river, as it beats at the end of the third quarter of every day on Khagodis’s equator.

  Hasso did his best to smile. “Lyhhrt should not be frightened, especially when others are so fearful of them. And I am ever so grateful to have an ally beside me.”

  But how can I leave her in such despair and misery? And how can I, how dare I help?

  :Forgive me for saying so, Archivist, but you don’t dare even try to help. It is not only dangerous—but if she has no strength of her own to grasp it, your help is useless.:

  Then both fell silent. They understood each other too well now to need anything but silence in mind and voice.

  Fthel IV: Ten Thousand Men Plus Ned

  Ned could remember his mother singing the verse, if not to him then to his sisters and brothers in the crammed little house on the other side of the world in New Grace City:

  The grand old Duke of York

  He had ten thousand men,

  He marched them up to the top of the hill

  And he marched them down again

  She’d got it from twenty generations of kids in the street who were too poor to watch KillerQwark on the trivvy or play ZammBanza with the plug-eye. The Lyhhrt had given him this number, along with everything else he knew of Brezant’s meeting with the renegades.

  The verse and the ten thousand kept buzzing in his mind while he packed a change of clothes and a bed-roll, his usual travel gear when he set out for dangerous places. The apartment was ringingly empty. Zel and the kids had slung backpacks and left before he was fully awake, he had felt their muzzy kisses and Zella’s silence. No more talk about risk, danger, dread.

  But Ned was thinking of that number alongside his experiences fighting in Zamos’s gameplexes for twenty years, places like Shen IV, where there might be five thousand guests and two thousand or more staff.

  I can bring a force of up to ten thousand troops with small arms and hypersledges … .

  On Shen IV even discounting atmospherics for fifteen species there were endless freights of food, drink, performance equipment, computers and robotics rolling in on kilometers of underground corridors, so … No strategist, Ned tried to imagine where ten thousand troops plus hypersledges might be forming the militia Brezant had in mind, on this world where colonists had made themselves at home in the ruins of ancient cities among forests, jungles and endless archipelagoes. Especially a world where equal thousands of GalFed’s civil servants took their vacations. And how Brezant would move them to Khagodis if his plans worked.

  Of course not ten thousand yet; a nucleus that would grow by drawing on shifting populations of laborers, factory workers, old pugs who scuffed for work, malcontents like Brezant’s woman who had migrated with big hopes that got shrunk … and the big problems: where Brezant was going to find the ships that would carry his thousands and his sledges, and stay out of the range of suspicion, find the transport shuttles that would reach those ships, where he got the seed money—

  Not my business.

  He picked up the bed-roll to sling it on his back, and began to think of something else. No one knew yet that he was going away with Spartakos, and the less and later they knew, the better. The Lyhhrt had watchers, and so would he.

  He unpacked the bedroll and stowed it in its cupboard, shucked his top and jeans and pulled on the thin shadowsuit (an old but good Lyhhrt artifact, fine as spider-silk) that would turn him into mist if he jumped out of his clothes and pulled its hood over his face when he was running late for GalFed. Topped that with the clean clothes he had unpacked, didn’t know what his laundry prospects were. Folded his impervious helmet small and tucked it in his pea jacket because few had ever seen him wearing it. Then buckled his wrist into another agents’ souvenir, an interworld trans-comm that looked like a cheap local message pad. Done.

  In the mirror he found a fairly presentable man who was out of work, a well-used pug something under forty, good muscle and no belly yet. Scarred mug turning a bit weath-erburned, and dark blond hair bleached from the light of five suns; not a deep thinker, hardly ever learned anything on purpose except fighting. But smart enough to suit his surroundings.

  That’s you, Ned.

  The weather was cloudy and close to rain, and he was glad of this, because it dulled the ache of leaving home—not knowing where he was going. He hunched his shoulders against the wind, and when a tree branch whacked his face and made him turn he realized he was being followed.

  He frowned over his carelessness but didn’t dare change his pace. Couldn’t make out who, kind of pudgy, vaguely familiar. He had that old feeling of being very isolated. He didn’t dare use the comm to call for help because the Lyhhrt was in too much danger already. Nothing to do but keep moving.

  The road was opening up into Plaza Square, and his mind dodged about for bolt-holes among the old buildings that made casings for new shops. He stared unseeing at the Tarot cards, sex aids, beers from forty-seven breweries on five worlds, cashbooks, dried sea-stars from Khagodis, and ganja (ge’inn and karynon in the back room). Follower ducked and lingered among broken columns that had become decorative statuary scrawled with graffiti. Ned did his own ducking toward the one place he could hope for help, and began to run.

  The tracker lost patience and came out in the open, panting, his puffy face red with effort. Ned knew him. The other fighter in the bar; not Geordie.

  Lyhhrt’s anger and terror flashing:

  Watch it, man—that’s Geordie, he drinks here!

  Hey Geordie, where’s your friend?

  Ned found the alley he was looking for, and the entrance, slowing to take a couple of long breaths and calm himself: he could afford that much.

  Waxers Works was a small gym set in the ruins of a once-beautiful stone grotto, an old and now shabby place with dirty floors and peeling walls where Ned and Zella used to work out once or twice a tenday, and usually found some old friends and fighting partners. They’d given it up when the money ran down. Nobody around today but Hammer Head and Knuckle Duster dueling with sliver-sticks, both wearing baggy purple pants and black and white checked jerkins, their near-identical freckled faces grinning with big teeth, flaming red hair flying. They were good.

  “Hullo, girls! What’s doing here?” Ned wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “Heyo Ned, ain’t seen you in whiles, got new work?”

  The pair were sisters whose real names were Daphne and Prunella, but they answered to Knuck and Ham readily enough.

  “Lookin’ for it, you heard of any?”

  They stopped and thumped their sticks on the floor so that the little bells on the tips of them jingled. “Nah, we’re too old for the porno, just slivers or chebok. But we got too whizzo for ’em nowdays, everbody gets pissed cause we’re not bleedin. So whatsit, Ned, we help you look?”

  “Thanks-oh girls, but whatsit is a boyo tailing me, he’s comin’ up the street there, an’ I dunno what he is but I don’t like ’im.” He glanced out the window, saw the edge of a shadow.

  “We wipe ’im for ya, Neddo?”

  “Nah, just scuff him a bit, change his mind for him.”

  “We do.” The sisters were half-a-head taller than Ned, and each weighed half again as much. “You want to take a dekko out the back way?”

  Ned was tempted. Then took a thought and added, “I’m gonna open up here
easy one sec ’cause if he’s just some gormless wacko I’ll be in real trouble, so you just keep by me, hey?” He did a little two-step to warm up and launched himself out the door, question on his tongue.

  There was no time to ask it. First he saw nobody and then a glastex dagger with a fat-fingered hand gripping it ticked him under the chin. It had wavy double edges, looked longer than it was, and sharp, very sharp. It shone white under the white sky.

  Ned gripped the wrist of the hand holding it with his left hand and shoved back into the fat face till the elbow joint growled, Attacker yelped, Ned kicked his shin for him, and when the knife flew from his fist Ned slammed his nose with the heel of his right hand.

  Geordie’s friend stared gaping. A thread of blood slipped down the cut that ran from forehead to jaw while his nose turned crimson. Ned ducked back in before he could pull himself together, and slid the door closed. He was suddenly, sharply, unreasonably aware that one of the local gendarmes in his khaki slops and cheap elastic gunbelt was shuffling down the lane toward his refuge.

  “Eh Ned, y’done it y’rself! That’s a steal!”

  “Y’were here when I needed.” He was heading for the back way, just to see if Geordie—

  :HE WAS BUT WE ARE HERE NOW,: the Lyhhrt said from somewhere in that sharp mindvoice. Ned stood still and began to shudder, found himself giggling a bit. “Nothing’s wrong, ladies, there’s nobody out here, it’s all right … . Thanks a lot, darlings, just go on fighting and you didn’t see a thing.”

  “Bangers an mash tonight, Ned, you come on over?”

  “’Nother time!” He gave them a wave goodbye, they thumped their staffs till the bells jingled, and he took a good last look at them standing like an Anglo-Saxon version of Ashanti warriors.

  When Ned closed the door behind himself no one was in the back alley. There was a thought-trail and he followed it, but his mind was still jingling with Knuck and Ham. He took a long calming breath. Yes. They were the kind of warriors Brezant might think he needed, but Ned wasn’t going to steer them.

  The Lyhhrt had holed up, literally. At the very base of the Grottoes, past where Geordie’s friend had squatted and the sea just touched the lip of the weathered platform, was a weed-choked cavern too small and wet for use by others.

  Ned bent to crawl into the dark and reeking hole, sidestepping rippling pools and dodging the patches of slime on the walls. The floor rose gradually and after a half-score steps opened up into a small dry room lit with a coldlight standard and neatly fitted with a narrow set of shelves; Ned felt the bubble-pop of a force-field as he stepped into it: the air was clean here. Spartakos was standing against the wall motionless, with his afferents turned down.

  The Lyhhrt was shelving jugs, jars and instruments. He had removed his artificial skin and was now a smaller figure in brushed silver. He turned his electronic eyes toward Ned, saying, “All that I own now is here … .” but Ned was looking at Spartakos. He had never seen Spartakos new, and the robot was far from that now, but the Lyhhrt had found something in his magic shelves powerful enough to remove any tarnish, recover most of the lost gloss, polish the pearl fingernails. He gleamed.

  The Lyhhrt said, “Would you resume your afferents, Spartakos.”

  The diamond eyes opened. “Hello, Ned!” Spartakos moved his arms up and out and added with innocent relish, “Am I not beautiful?”

  “You are,” Ned said.

  But the Lyhhrt spoke without warmth: “Now, Helper, what have you to say?”

  Ned was frowning. “Did you know who those chukkers were last night?”

  “I realized eventually, yes.”

  “You pulled that Geordie out of the sea, and that was his fat friend trying to shuck me.”

  “Should I have let him drown? I’ve taken good care of both of them. Now—”

  “And they knew me too!”

  :They knew you from Scudder’s Inn, Garden Vale, State of Bonzador five years ago when you saved the child of our Others. Like you, I would not have touched them until I was sure of that. Now tell me how we will go ahead.:

  Ned took a sharp breath and a step forward, eyes up. “You want a hop between stars, Lyhhrt? I’m sorry you’re lost and have no Other with you, but for all your money you have no ship unless you can find one to hire, and I haven’t heard of any, and you have a helper who is just a pug. The only way we’ll get to Khagodis from this hole is with all the other pugs and scruff that hires on with Brezant and let him pay our way.”

  A Hot Box

  Life went on for a day in the forest mansion, and no one looked sidelong at Tyloe. He wondered if everybody else had gone through the initiation. He walked carefully, uneasily wondering how far he could make himself go in the service.

  Toward evening a runner came, and Brezant began to scream: Everyone came running.

  The room Brezant used for his office had a desk with everything built into its surface, but he was not paying attention to the newstrips, stock quotes, sports-wins that flashed at him from seven worlds. “Whose goddamn dumb idea was that! Thought they’d shuck him in a barroom fight? Assholes! Last thing a show pug wants is a fight he can’t control! They wasted their time on him? He’s a nit, a nothing, he hasn’t been in GalFed service the last five years! Come on, Lorrice, whaddya say!”

  The room was stuccoed, its ceilings vast, its massive cabinets in dark wood with deeply carved doors and knotted brass handles; Tyloe, from his scrapings of liberal education, recognized Varvani work, an art heavy and full of dread.

  But Lorrice, she was cool today, he thought, tuning fork muted. Perhaps sex had made her calmer. She said, “I never met him,” Brezant snapped his fingers and she added without any hurry, “but Tyloe here, you took fighting lessons from him in that school, didn’t you? He’d recognize you.”

  “That was a while ago, he’d have forgotten me,” Tyloe muttered. “I was the wrong shape to get the hang of his style.”

  “You mean you couldn’t beat him,” Brezant said.

  “I ran into his fist on Shen IV,” Oxman said.

  “He’s been beaten plenty,” Tyloe said impatiently. “He’s got a mess of scars on his face and a bad jaw graft. Whether or not I could beat him, there were no more jobs for pugs.”

  Arms akimbo, Brezant surveyed his muster, snapping, “Nobody else got a word here?”

  Heads turned back and forth until Lorrice, staring at the messenger cowering in the corner, said, “Frankie, just take that helmet off and let me look at you?” She forestalled Brezant’s surge: “I can do it myself, Andres. Just let me.” She took the helmet from Frankie’s head. “What did Geordie say?”

  “Well, he wasn’t in very good shape when I saw him in the hospital.” He seemed less afraid of Brezant than of Lorrice, cold as a dagger in her gray silk suit.

  “He was beat up?”

  “No, but his eyes was turned up an he couldn’t talk very well. Something gone wrong in his head.”

  “An ESP attack!”

  “They said he’d get better.”

  “And he said … something. Think.”

  “I don’t much want to—awright, I think what he said was, a real weird Earther come in the bar, sizes up Ned Gattes—Geord never saw ‘em before, and he was drinkin there a thirtyday, and the first thing he thought it might be a Lyhhrt ’cause they walk funny in those machine shells, even though this one was wearin clothes, and next thing he was dumped in the water and forgot everything else.”

  “Sonofabitch!” Brezant whirling and snarling, “That Lyhhrt will know everything about us! Those are two I want wiped. You all say yes?”

  Nobody said anything except Cranshawe, the lawyer, in his even voice, “You might have other Lyhhrt coming after him.”

  “Then maybe we just get us some tame Lyhhrt! Go get him you jokers, Oxman and Hummer, you go out there and really whack him!” Sweeping the air with his hands, “Out out everybody, eat high, drink up and sleep tight! Just you, Lorrice, you stay with me!”

  He danced there
punching the air with high fists, his vital and powerfully sexual essence running over and spilling, “You get it out of ’em baby, no secrets! Love ya love ya love ya,” shoving his face between her breasts and snorting. “Do for me baby, do for me! Stick with me and I’ll pave your ass in diamonds!”

  Tyloe sat in his bedroom holding his dizzy head. He’s crazy.

  Armor

  “First, you need a helmet,” the Lyhhrt said.

  “I have one.” Ned showed it.

  The Lyhhrt did not dignify it with a look. He reached into his shelves and picked out what looked at first like a bronze armband, fanned it out into a jointed helmet of thin plates lined with fine-linked mesh. “You push this lever to close it, and pull that tab to open it, and the button over here will lock it. This sensor antenna beneath your ear will allow you to communicate with Spartakos wherever he is, and when it is retracted, neither I nor any other Lyhhrt can reach you.” He folded it up. “Now try it.”

  Ned frowned. “I’ve never used one.”

  “If you want to join a militia you will need this.”

  Ned took it gingerly, cringed a little at the vibration in his hands as it sprang open, set it on his head, locked it, pushed in the antenna’s tip—a mind all alone in the universe for one moment!—

  “It fits,” the Lyhhrt said.

  Ned extended the antenna hastily as he gaped at his reflection in the cupboard door. “Eh, Captain Futurismo!” It looked only a little too beautiful. Lyhhrt could not do less. As long as somebody doesn’t kill me for it—

  For an instant he had an image of himself grasping the savage chebok, and shook his head.

  “Unless you have a genetic twin it will not work for anyone else. But,” the Lyhhrt added with more than a tinge of regret, “if you are truly afraid of theft and murder I will tarnish.”