Crashlander

The corner of my eye caught a clerk's hands (human) opening the case and reaching in for that smaller tube, with a grip built for a kzin child. Or a man — My breath froze in my throat. I was looking into Feather's horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk's face.

It came out as a whisper. «No, Sharrol, no no no. It's me. It's Beowulf.»

She didn't fire. But she was pale with terror, her jaw set like rock, and the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose.

I eased two inches to the right, very slowly, to put myself between the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn't a swimsuit he was wearing: it was the same sleeve less, legless police uniform I'd seen at breakfast.

We were eye to eye. The whites showed wide around her irises. I said, «My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It's Bey, love. I'm a foot shorter. Remember?»

She remembered. It terrified her.

«I wouldn't fit. The cavity was built for Carlos. My heart and lungs were shredded, my back was shattered, my brain was dying, and you had to get me into the cavity. But I wouldn't fit, remember? Sharrol, I have to know.» I looked around quickly. An aisle over, kzinti noses came up, smelling fear. «Did you kill Feather?»

«Kill Feather.» She set the tube down carefully on the display case. Her brow wrinkled. «I was going through my pockets. It was distracting me, keeping me sane. I needed that. The light was wrong, the gravity was wrong, the Earth was so far away —»

«Shh.»

«Survival gear, always know what you have, you taught me that.» She began to tremble. «I heard a sonic boom. I looked up just as you were blown backward. I thought I must be c-crazy. I couldn't have seen that.»

It was my back that felt vulnerable now. I felt all those floors behind and above me, all those eyes. The kzin cop had lost interest. If there was a moment for Feather Filip to take us both, this was it.

But the ARM weapon was in Sharrol's hands –

«But Carlos jumped into the boat and roared off, and Feather screamed at him, and you were all blood and sprawled out like — like dead — and I, I can't remember.»

«Yes, dear.» I took her hand, greatly daring. «But I have to know if she's still chasing us.»

She shook her head violently. «I jumped on her back and cut her throat. She tried to point that tube at me. I held her arm down, she elbowed me in the ribs, I hung on, she fell down. I cut her head off. But Bey, there you were, and Carlos was gone and the kids were too, and what was I going to do?» She came around the counter and put her arms around me and said, «We're the same height. Futz!»

I was starting to relax. Feather was nowhere. We were free of her. «I kept telling myself you must have killed her. A trained ARM psychotic, but she didn't take you seriously. She couldn't have guessed how quick you'd wake up.

«I fed her-into the organics reservoir.»

«Yeah. There was nowhere else all that biomass could have come from. It had to be Feather —»

«And I couldn't lift your body, and you wouldn't fit anyway. I had to cut off your h-h-«She pulled close and tried to push her head under my jaw, but I wasn't tall enough any more. «Head. I cut as low as I could. Tanj, we're the same height. Did it work? Are you all right?»

«I'm fine. I'm just short. The 'doc rebuilt me from my DNA, from the throat down, but it built me in Fafnir gravity. Good thing, too, I guess.»

«Yeah.» She was trying to laugh, gripping my arms as if I might disappear. «There wouldn't have been room for your feet. Bey, we shouldn't be talking here. That kzin is a cop, and nobody knows how good their hearing is. Bey, I get off at sixteen hundred.»

«I'll shop. We're both overdue on life gifts.»

* * *

«How do I look? How should I look?»

I had posed us on the roof of the Pequod, with the camera looking upward past us into the green seaweed forest. I said, «Just right. Pretty, cheerful, the kind of woman a man might drown himself for. A little bewildered. You didn't contact me because you got a blow to the head. You're only just healing. You ready? Take one, now.» I keyed the vidcamera.

Me: «Wilhelmin, Toranaga, I hope you're feeling as good as we are. I had no trouble finding Milcenta once I got my head on straight —»

Sharrol (bubbling): «Hello! Thank you for Jan's life, and thank you for teaching him to sail. I never could show him how to do that. We're going to buy a boat as soon as we can afford it.»

Me: «I'm ready to face the human race again. I hope you are too. This may help.» I turned the camera off.

«What are you giving them?» Sharrol asked.

«Silverware, service for a dozen. Now they'll have to develop a social life.»

«Do you think they turned you in?»

«They had to. They did well by me, love. What bothers me is, they'll never be sure I'm not a murderer. Neither will the police. This is a wonderful planet for getting rid of a corpse. I'll be looking over my shoulder for that kzinti cop —»

«No, Bey —»

«He smelled our fear.»