“Nobody knows, really,” Killeen said. “Certainly no Aspect we carry remembers. It was ’way back, must have been done by humans with powers we can’t even guess. I sure want to meet them.”
Toby caught a curious plaintive note in his father’s voice, but the others gave no sign of registering it. They all marched along, giving no outward sign of this conversation, gleeful at putting one over on the dwarves. Then he felt Shibo’s Personality rise in him, welcome though uncalled.
They are rats in bow ties. But useful.
“Huh?” Toby felt the strong thread of her, ivory slivers shooting through his sensorium, masking the gray city.
An ancient term I learned from Zeno. The ancients wore constrictions about their throats to signify attitudes. A “bow tie” stood for a certain rakish tilt. Andro’s arrogance belies his true station. He is swaggering before the country know-nothings he takes us to be.
Toby relayed this to the others and they murmured in startled agreement. Killeen nodded. “That fits. He’s trying to impress us in some way. This place”—a sweeping arm—“pretty fine, sure, but it’s a shack compared with what the Chandelier folk could do.”
“Could be,” Jocelyn begrudged. “But where are the Chandelier Families? How come we’ve got to deal with Andro?”
Toby wished Quath was here to help. Part of him wanted to click his heels, happy that his father had done it, found the age-old goal of Family Bishop. The other part wondered what was really going on. Certainly this wasn’t the grand homecoming they’d all expected. He could read the barely suppressed disappointment in everyone’s eyes.
He wanted to say something to Killeen, to reach across the chasm that had slowly yawned wider through these years of flight, of the Cap’ncy. But flaming eyes made it hard to have a heart-to-heart.
Andro chattered on about the sights. He seemed to think they were hot stuff, prodigious monuments. Brown municipal buildings with heavy, ornate columns framing the tiny doors. Factories with no windows and no identifiable purpose. Squat black apartment buildings with puny balconies that seemed like stuck-on afterthoughts.
Toby sent to Cermo, “I’ll allow as how this is richer than the Citadel, sure. But the Low Arcology ruins, they impressed me more.”
Cermo replied, “I dunno. Have the feelin’ we’re missin’ something here. I mean, I still don’t figure how this place can even be here.”
At last they reached a pyramid-shaped mass of gray, shiny stone that looked a little more important. Their destination.
Andro led them into the rock-ribbed entranceway with a deep bow that was probably sarcastic. Toby gave him a curt nod, stepped into the foyer beyond, followed Andro across the marble floor—and smacked his forehead on the doorway. He suppressed a grunt. Andro’s mouth barely twitched in a smirk that was probably lost on everyone else. Rubbing his forehead, Toby followed the rest into a room with rows of hard benches. A lone figure dominated a battered wooden desk at the far end. The desk was discolored, chipped, its legs cracked. Toby supposed it was a “relic of office,” such as the ancient chairs used by elders back in Citadel Bishop.
“Fresh batch, Andro?” the squat, leathery woman at the desk asked. She wore a black robe and looked as if she had weathered a hard night. “The last ones you brought me are still debating the fine points of import-export law in jail.”
“How was I to know they could get those sniff-dream tablets through our filters?” Andro said plaintively, spreading his hands. “That’s the engineers’ fault.”
“A wise craftsman doesn’t blame his tools,” the woman said, lazily sliding her eyes over the Bishops. The sight did not seem to excite much interest; she yawned.
“These beefies are a simple case,” Andro said, stepping forward in a deferential manner. He pressed his right palm against a small jet-black area on the woman’s worn wooden desk. A breeeeet! seemed to signify data transmission from his personal files. “They’re a little hazy about where they’re from, but they don’t seem bright enough to be hiding any contra.”
“Ummm, you’re probably right there,” the woman said, looking them up and down. Out of the corner of his eye Toby saw Cermo open his mouth angrily, then close it again after a stern glance from Killeen.
After the learning-food, Andro had given them all language slip-chips to insert in their spinal ports—complaining all the while about how antique their spinal insert collars were. Toby’s chip was working well already, even though Andro had scornfully referred to the slip-chip wafers as “dumb-downs,” apparently meaning that they translated the speech of Andro’s people into sentences simple-minded enough for Bishops to understand.
The woman glanced down at her desk top, which flickered and was not worn wood any more but a glossy display. Toby saw number-thickets and long lists, all from Andro’s file on them. He couldn’t read the language, but it looked like a lot of information, all neatly sorted out. Yet Andro had never seemed to be taking anything down, or even paying much attention to them.
Killeen stepped forward, “If you are in authority I must ask that you tell us how to find some relatives of ours, Bishops, and a man—”
“I am a judge,” the woman said with a flinty, casual air. “And you will remain silent until I ask a question.”
“But we’ve come—”
“Don’t listen real well, do you?” She twisted her hand a funny, helical way. An electrical jolt streamed through the air, sending Toby’s internal sensorium reeling. It was a stomach-churning, startling effect.
Killeen tottered, looked green for a moment, then pulled himself together. “I . . . see.”
The judge gave him a wolfish grin, all knife-edge and strung-wire fine. “I have taken the trouble to chip-process your speaking patterns, so can state in firm voice familiar to you the consequences of your actions. I am assuming that you will spend an annum, maybe two, in the work-house for your violation of our tax codes. If you wish to improve on that figure—”
“Violation?” Killeen bristled. “We sailed into this place in search—”
“Appearing out of the Far Black like that, you set off alarms. The Regency had to muster defenses. You might have been mech, after all.”
“We fly an ancient human ship!”
“Deception runs rife in the Far Black. And you sent no forward-hailer to let us know. Defense costs money, rebble-dep, time, trouble. A debt that must be paid in the work-house.” The judge shrugged. “Simple social justice.”
Killeen stiffened. Bishops were not merely scavengers; they had always traded with the other Families, to good advantage. There had even been a time, the infamous Accommodation, when Families bargained with mechs. Killeen said shrewdly, “Maybe we’re carrying something of interest to you.”
The judge tossed her hair with feigned disinterest. “What could you possibly have?”
“Fresh samples of space plants from a molecular cloud.”
Killeen waved forward Cermo, who added, “We’re regrowing them. Good eating.”
“Ummm. Regional delicacies? Marginal at best.” The judge looked off into space.
Killeen said quickly, “We carry tech we’ve picked up from our homeworld.”
“Ummm.” No reaction.
“And from another. Some strange artifacts. Ancient, maybe.”
“More planet-level goods?” The judge looked bored. “We get rafts and rafts of it when immigrants pour in.”
