Departures

“They are the instruments of our improvement,” the greenskin said mildly. “Does the raw clay hate the kiln that burns it to make it into a vase?” Nadab swung his unwinking eyes to Captain Chen. “Now will you let me do as I must do?”

“Damn you.” The captain turned on the control board as if it were an enemy and stabbed a button with wholly unnecessary violence. The door to the stairwell that led down to the cargo bay slid open.

Captain Chen said nothing more. If Nadab’s so smart, Carver thought, let him figure that out for himself. He was; he did. Without hesitation, he started down the stairs. His voice floated up after him: “My people are in your debt.”

“Oh, shut up,” the captain muttered. She watched Nadab’s progress on the ship’s internal monitor. He went straight to the cargo bay’s outer door. Captain Chen made him wait several minutes. At last, still shaking her head, she let the door rise.

The outside mikes picked up the roar the blues let out when they saw Nadab. It sent atavistic chills racing up Carver’s spine; though he had never seen one, his glands scream lion. The instant Nadab was outside the ship, Captain Chen sent the cargo bay door slamming shut.

Like the tide rolling in, the blues surged forward. Nadab did not die tamely. He sprinted for the greenskin village like an antelope trying to break through a hundred prides of big cats. He still had that one chance in ten billion of winning freedom.

He never got fifty meters from the Enrico Dandolo. The blues dragged him down and took their vengeance on him-and then on his corpse-for his presumption. Carver made himself watch it all, even when the flames sprang up. His only consolation by then was that Nadab could not possibly be feeling what was going on any more.

Once they were done amusing themselves with Nadab-or once there was nothing left to amuse themselves with-some blues started for the greenskin village. Quite without orders (in itself unheard of before) Shumilov fired a burst to warn them back. To his credit-not that any human was ready to give him much-Baasa had the Shkenaz garrison keep the mob away. At last the blues began drifting back toward the city.

“Poor bastards,” Michaels grunted. “Some of ‘em’ll be all tired tomorrow from working so late tonight.”

Carver threw himself into a chair buried his face in his hands. Patrice touched his shoulder. “You did everything you could, Jerome,” she said gently. “You cannot blame yourselves that things here are different from what we thought. What can you do for people who have their own reasons, ones they find good, for not wanting their lot to change?”

He sat and thought about that for a long time. He knew that Patrice meant the answer to her question to be nothing, and that she had spoken mostly to lift him from his gloom. He was grateful to her for that. But her words sparked something in him that perhaps had not occurred to her.

He got up and went to his cabin. When he came back, he was carrying a large, fat codex.”What do you have there?” Captain Chen asked.

“An astronomy text based on Kepler and Newton. I intended to use it as a follow-up to the Galileo; it has the math to carry the blues forward from there.”

“Intended?” Not for the first time, Carver remembered that Lloyd Michaels was too good a trader to let much get past him. “What will you do with it now?”

Carver threw the book down the disposal chute. “Call it a last favor for Nadab,” he said. He walked out of the control room again.

NASTY, BRUTISH, AND…

Sooner or later just about everybody tries his hand at writing a bar story. This one’s mine. It may also be of interest because it introduces the Foitani, who play such a prominent role in Earthgrip (Del Rey: New York, 1991). They aren’t an entirely pleasant people, but given their history, they could hardly be expected to be.

Only humans, and not many of them, know why my favorite bar is called Hobbes’. That doesn’t mean humans are the only people who go in, though, not by a long shot. Humans are spread thin out here, a couple of thousand light-years from home. The night I’m thinking of, I was the only one in the place.

“What’ll it be, Walt?” Raoul L’evesque’s number-two bartender asked me when I came in. (No, Hobbes’ isn’t named for the owner, obviously.)

“Something nasty, brutish, and short,” I told him. (That’s why it’s called Hobbes’, and knowing it’s worth a free drink.)

“Tequila and mor-fruit?” Joe suggested. He knows me. He reached for the tequila with one hand, the mor-fruit (it’s called that, I suppose, because it’s mor or less like lime) with another, and the saltshaker with another. That left one free to wave at somebody who’d come in behind me. (I told you I was the only human in the place.)