Pestle (4)

[hwrnmnbsol]

Part Four. I think something's starting to click! no, wait; that's just a hissing cockroach. Still have no idea where I'm going.

"Lopez," I barked, "Damage report."

"Huh?" said Lopez, popping his head up out of the ventilation duct where he was working. "What's wrong with you? I just told you what's broke and what's not."

"I always wanted to say that," I confessed sheepishly.

"You're the worst captain ever," Lopez accused. "Look, we can limp around if we need to, but otherwise we're stuck here for awhile. Stay out of my way while I get some of our main engines going again. Should take, I dunno, twenty hours?"

"You have ten," I commanded.

Lopez favored me with a withering look. "Would you just make yourself useful or something?" he complained. "Go see if Swami's figured out where Hot Henry has gotten himself. I'll bet you anything he's ripping us off right now." Lopez disappeared down the duct again. A moment later a flickering blue radiance filled the engineering hold as my Weasard engineer resumed welding.



I returned to the crew nexus and clawed my way up the intestine to _Abalone_. The big science vessel had _Petunia_ under tow, boosting us to a more stable orbit while repairs were made. Hoggrid's Corvaire stood watch; it was dented and scarred, and even more asymmetric than usual, but it seemed to be basically functional despite having taken a beating from the spectres. Several of the smaller vessels were in as bad a shape as _Petunia_, but to everybody's knowledge no convoy members were reported lost or missing.

Unless you counted Hot Henry. Nobody had seen or heard of him since Swami reported that the spectres were coming. Swami said that he was certain Hot Henry had burned away from the fight when we split up, though. That wasn't a good sign. Pestle was potentially a treasure trove without rival, and for people to go sneaking off by themselves was not confidence-inducing. Not that Hot Henry ever instilled trust in anybody.

I clawed up into _Abalone_ and looked about the joint. Swami wasn't around; his ship was big enough that searching for him was likely to be a non-trivial pain in the ass. On the other hand, a second intestine draped across to Mincey's ship, _Quiet_Bitch_. I decided to pay him a call in his converted light freighter.

The intestine connected to the midsection of the long, blocky ship. To the right were crew compartments; I could see Mincey and Muskie talking at his kitchen table. To the left was a freezer module. The door was open and I could see a bunch of stasis tubes. They seemed to all be occupied by people, but the glass was fogged and moldy.

"Hey Mincey," I called, "are all these people dead?"

"How the hell should I know?" snarled Mincey. "Get off my boat."

I strolled into the crew lounge, kicking a cat that looked like it wanted a kick. "Muskie, what are you doing over here?" I asked.

"Took an oxygen bottle in the head," said Muskie. Muskie was a biohabber, which made him an important guy. When you're out in deep space with thugs and murderers for company, it becomes a lot more important to get a nice cultured steak or a bulb of beer.

"First you hit your head, and then you went to see Mincey?" I asked. "Show me your chart so I can draw in a line that slopes downward."

"Right here, asshole," said Mincey evenly, waving at me.

"No," I corrected, "the asshole is right *here*." I turned around and showed him. "This is why none of us have faith in you as a doctor – your soft anatomy skills."

"Okay, fine," said Muskie, speaking in low tones. "I came over here so me and Mincey could have a nice chat."

"Don't tell this jackass nothing," spat Mincey. "He's a born blabber."

"Tell me what?" I asked. Muskie leaned forward.

"Don't you think it's a little suspicious," he said, "that the spectre swarm showed up just as we were figuring out how to get inside the tomb?"

"I think you mean: we found out about the spectre swarm just as we were figuring things out," Mincey pointed out.

"Yeah, using Swami's prox-eyes," added Muskie. "Awful convenient that they were planted out there, wasn't it? And then the spectres showed up right on cue and bashed us around, all except for Swami, who didn't get a scratch."

"You think Swami's setting us all up?" I asked. "Why?"

"There could be a pile of Javanite over there as big as this spaceship," said Muskie. "That can do strange things to somebody."

I shook my head. "I can't see it," I said.

"Okay, then how about this," said Mincey. "Swami's paranoid enough to plant prox-eyes behind us, right? But now Hot Henry is missing, and you're telling me that Swami wasn't prepared enough to plant cameras around Pestle so he could watch it from every angle? Cameras that would pick up where Hot Henry went? It just don't add up."

I frowned. "That's a little weird," I said, "but why would Swami not tell us where Hot Henry went?"

"Hot Henry," said Muskie, "is a perfect sociopath."

"Lucky," grumbled Mincey.

"Swami could want him out of the way because he's unstable. OR, Swami could be in cahoots with Hot Henry, and they could be plotting to take the treasure for themselves. Maybe Swami staged this little distraction so that Hot Henry could go check into getting into the spheres ahead of the rest of us." Muskie looked nervously down the intestine.

"Swami's the one who told me about Hot Henry being missing," I pointed out. "Why wouldn't he just play dumb and give his buddy an even longer jump on the rest of us?"

"That might be what he wants you to think!" hissed Muskie.

"Or maybe you're a couple of morons," I said. "If you really want to look for a traitor, why aren't you suspicious of Hoggrid? He's the one who played grabby-feely with two dozen spectres but seems to be basically intact." Muskie opened and then closed his mouth.

"Or me, for that matter," I added. "I could be in this with McMillian, here to get you mooks to crack the oyster open and then brush you aside so we can swoop in for the pearl."

Mincey sniggered. "You, a traitor mastermind?" he snorted.

Muskie grinned. "This could all be part of Jackpot's master plan!" he hooted, and the two erupted in laughter.

I decided I didn't need to stick around for any more abuse, so I climbed back down the intestine to _Abalone_. I didn't like what I had just heard. True, backstabbing is an ever-present danger in any enterprise, criminal or not, and anybody who didn't take precautions to ensure they got their fair share was basically begging to get screwed. But Swami was the nucleus of our loose organization. Doubting his desire to profit along with the rest of the group, if not his integrity, seemed somehow unfair.

And yet, if I were Swami, I'd be continuously monitoring everything in the area…

Returning to _Abalone_, I found Swami in the lounge looking out of the panoramic window. He was watching Pestle floating a few miles away, its milky white stone exterior seeming to be entirely at rest unless one focused upon it. Then imperfections in its skin revealed the moving parts spinning against one another. Swami was small and delicate, and the concentration on his nut-brown face seemed unbreakable. The thought of him being a possible traitor made me queasy. All at once I realized it wasn't because I was afraid of Swami and his intelligence, although I knew I should be. I realized it was because I liked the guy.

Swami turned away from the window and smiled. "Amazing view," he said. "I can't get enough of it."

"Yeah," I said, stepping up next to Swami. "Looks like … money."

"You know what strikes me most about Pestle?" Swami said. "It is a construct, first and foremost, of balance. All its parts are in harmony. It is a simple object, at least when it's seen from far away like this, but a remarkable ballet must be executed perfectly with every turn, or it will collapse in ruin." He nodded to himself.

I looked at Pestle. I thought it looked a little like some kind of a Mandrillorian sex toy. I was about to say so but I decided not to mess up Swami's deep thinking.

Swami turned to me. "Your ship will be disabled for at least another eighteen hours," he said matter-of-factly.

"Lopez and me were discussing more of a ten hour time-frame," I hedged.

Swami frowned. "You have underestimated," he said. "Come and join me. We will use one of my shuttles to inspect the damage from the exterior."

"Why?" I asked.

"Think of this," Swami said benevolently, "as the best way to annoy your Weasard friend when he sees you nosing around his wounded baby."

"Good point," I conceded. "Can I borrow a vacuum suit? Mine, uh, needs repair." The only thing worse than breathing Weasard stink is re-breathing Weasard stink.

We crammed into one of Swami's small ovoid shuttles and launched. Swami used subtle touches on the maneuvering jets to angle us under the belly of his ship and down the intestinal tether to scope out _Petunia_. The old girl looked like a half-shelled shrimp. Swami tsk'ed when he saw her. I realized I had to know, one way or another, about the renegade scientist who I liked.

"Swami," I said, "you know where Hot Henry is, don't you?"

"Of course." There was no pause. "But I had to wait to speak of it until now. This shuttle is the only thing I can be sure isn't bugged." He maneuvered the shuttle to face the huge crack running diagonally across _Petunia_'s hull. It had been half-zippered up by Lopez's welding.

"What makes you think the rest of the ship is bugged?" I asked.

"Not just the ship; the entire convoy. I've found many of the devices, but some of them are very small, very subtle. Not at all Hot Henry's style. Clearly he's in a partnership of some sort."

I blinked. "With who?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Swami shone the main forward light through the crack in my ship. The light gleamed off the facemask of Lopez's vacuum suit; the Weasard shook a fist and said something that was probably rude. I thought about the options.

"McMillan?" I asked.

"Certainly," said Swami. "I knew it from the moment we arrived."

"How?"

Swami turned to me. "Do you remember Hot Henry's first report? He had just come across McMillan's ship. Hadn't gone aboard it; he'd just spotted it visually from outside. It's a Gorelid Deuce, he said, with a malfunctioning cloak. How did he know the cloak was malfunctioning? It might have just been off. But no, indeed, it wasn't working. Moreover, it wasn't repairable. How did he know it so early? Hot Henry's no mechanic. Even a mechanic wouldn't have known without studying it." Swami waved at Lopez, who only got more excited.

"Shoot," I said, thinking hard. "Hot Henry led us onto McMillan's ship. They could have trapped us there but they didn't."

"I think they're still trying to trap us," Swami said. "We just haven't taken the bait yet."

"What bait is that?" I asked.

"Doing the hard work," Swami replied. "Cracking the tomb open. Risking our lives. Letting us get almost to the point of victory, and then killing us and taking the artifact for themselves."

"I dunno, I think we hold all the cards right now," I argued. "We know the score on Pestle. We've got McMillan's Deuce…"

"We have *a* Deuce," Swami corrected. "Do you know why I know where Hot Henry is?"

"Because you put cameras everywhere as soon as we arrived?" I asked hopefully.

"Exactly, my friend!" Swami congratulated. "And everybody thinks you're such a dimwit."

"Don’t sound so surprised," I sulked.

Swami pulled out a tablet. "Here's where Hot Henry went," he said. An image appeared of Pestle as seen from close to the Spinward nose. Hot Henry's Viper streaked into the field of view. It transited across Pestle and then disappeared. One moment it was there; the next moment it was gone. I gaped.

"There are two Gorelid Deuces," Swami said quietly. "One was planted to throw me off. Its cloak was scuttled so as not to put something useful into our hands. The other one's cloak works just fine."

"And McMillan and crew are on it," I concluded grimly.