Four in the Way Read online

  “I should have foreseen this,” confessed Rastheln’iq upon hearing the news from Noomi Bloodgood and Indri Mindsinger. The pair had found him tending a small garden he’d created outside the rooms he’d claimed as his own at the aft of deck 3, where all the crew had made their homes. Two corridors converged at the back of the deck, and, by removing one of the quarters, the plant man had created a small triangular foyer outside the laboratories he used. Tender green stalks were already coming up out of the soil. “I was giddy with excitement after having obtained the software for Overdrive 2 and was not thinking clearly.”

  Noomi grinned. “You? Giddy?”

  Rastheln’iq gazed at her. “Perhaps an overstatement. It is the word that came to mind when thinking of the feeling animal races experience. I meant that my feeling was strong enough to distract me.”

  “Vir have feelings?” the Tatar girl asked in a surprised tone.

  “Of course. We feel satisfaction and desire. If we did not, we would have no motive to pursue any endeavor. We do not possess emotions such as you experience -- strong, violent, passionate. Emotions do not compel us to act; our goals do. You might call our emotions ‘moods’.”

  “Very interesting,” remarked Indri. “But what are we going to do about the alert? The Templars are probably broadcasting it on every civilized world for ten parsecs in every direction.”

  “True,” mused Rastheln’iq as he continued to putter in his garden. The minds of members of the Vir race were spread out throughout its nervous system, rather like the ganglia of insects. This allowed them to focus on or do more than one thing at a time without impairing either action. A centralized “brain” controlled everything. “However, they cannot know where we are, not even that we are still in the Borderlands, not even that we are still together. Without knowing what our ship is capable of, they cannot estimate our whereabouts. We could be more than fifty-four parsecs away, into another ward, even out of the Xuan Wu Marches. They are fishing, and nothing more.”

  “Despite that, there is still the real possibility that their efforts may produce results,” countered the Delphite priest.

  “True,” agreed Rastheln’iq. “But there must be a number of Delph, Tatars and even Vir in the Borderlands. The Templars will need a genetic scan to ascertain our identities, and they must first learn our whereabouts and have cause for suspicion. There are a number of things we can do to minimize either of these possibilities. One might be to always be in the company of Tully, for the Templars do not know of him.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Noomi declared as the Earthman came into view. His face held a hangdog look, as if a penniless relative of his had just died. He shuffled forward sheepishly.

  The Tatar girl grinned and laughed. “Did you lose your stake and now you’re as poor as the rest of us?”

  “No, I won,” Tully muttered. “It’s what I won that concerns me.”

  “What’s that?”

  The human waved a hand, and from around the bend in the corridor came a woman!

  Noomi Bloodgood gasped aloud at the sight of the female, who was short and tanned, the skin of her torso spotted with large rust-colored patches. These became smaller, eventually disappearing, as they went down her limbs. These, as well as much of her torso, were bare. Her hair was the same hue as the spots, with a coppery sheen to it. She was a beautiful girl, possessing an indefinable alluring quality. The Tatar glanced over to find that Indri felt it, as well. Rastheln’iq, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to whatever the girl seemed to exude.

  “This is Cyat,” said Tully in a sheepish tone. “I won her in a card game.” He went on to describe the circumstances of how this event had come about. All this while, the girl Cyat said nothing. She glanced about her, as if soaking in the environs which were to be her new home.

  “I asked this Blashko what a cyat was when he offered her, and he told me she was a jewel. I thought he meant it literally,” Tully explained in an embarrassed tone. “How was I to know?”

  “I warned you not to go anywhere alone,” Indri put in in a not unkindly tone.

  Noomi grinned. “So Tully’s got himself a wife!”

  “It ain’t like that!” the Earthman rejoined hotly.

  “What do you propose to do with her?” asked Rastheln’iq. “We have never discussed it, but certainly we each should be able to recruit companionship as we see fit.”

  “You desire companionship?” Noomi asked the Viridian scientist in a surprised tone. “You’re full of surprises today, Rattlesnake!”

  “Every organism desires companionship at one time or another in its life,” the Vir replied without rancor to the Tatar’s nickname for him. Unlike many animal species, he did not find offense where none was intended.

  “Welcome to the Vishnu, Cyat,” said Indri Mindsinger, coming forward to greet the girl, who could not have been much older than eighteen.

  Noomi joined him. “If you have any trouble with this skivver, you just tell me,” she said. “Come with me. I’ll help you get settled in.”

  Once the two women were gone, Tully looked pleadingly at the Delphite priest. “I tried to get rid of her but she won’t go. She says I won her so now she belongs to me. As far as I’ve been able to get out of her, her race is prized as concubines. They’re sold off by parents or family members like indentured servants, and, after a time, return to their planet.”

  “Her race?” inquired Indri.

  “Nefrati.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “What am I going to do?” asked the Earthman.

  “You could sell her, trade her ….”

  Tully’s face screwed up in distaste.

  “You could give her some money and abandon her in Freeport. There are numerous passenger ships going in and out of its spaceport.”

  “Maybe,” the human said hesitantly.

  “I thought you wanted to be rid of her.”

  “I do, but … there’s something about her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having her around,” said Tully in a tentative tone. “For a while,” he added quickly. He turned and hurried to join the two women.

  “There is something about her,” Indri observed quietly as Tully departed.

  Rastheln’iq, watching the scene dispassionately, did not reply.

  “Did you get enough to eat, Cyat?” Tully asked the Nefrati girl one evening after supper.

  “Zendes!” Noomi Bloodgood exclaimed under her breath. Casting her gaze in the direction of Indri Mindsinger, she muttered, “This version of Tully is worse than the last one. I can’t stand to see him mooning over that girl. I’m sick of it.” This had been going on for some days now.

  The priest, born of a patient species, merely smiled at the Tatar girl’s discomfort. He was more puzzled than irritated by the Earthman’s behavior, for Tully was one of the more selfish and corrupt individuals that Indri knew, and, as a freedom fighter, he had associated with the worst that the galaxy had to offer. His attitude toward Cyat ran counter to everything the Delph knew about him. He had been no help strategizing, and when the pair departed the mess hall, he said so.

  “What does it matter?” asked Rastheln’iq. “He is not wanted as we are, and would not have put much effort in keeping our necks out of the Templars’ noose even without the presence of the girl.”

  Noomi snorted. “You said it! Look at all the trouble he’s caused us!”

  “You sound jealous,” observed the Delphite priest.

  “Not me,” protested the girl.

  “Neither point is relevant,” interjected the Viridian scientist. “However, you might consider that he could have morally and legally ejected us at any time, stranding us wherever we happened to be. I can assure you, we would be in Imperium custody at this moment if that had occurred. We owe him our gratitude, no matter our personal feelings.”

  “He’d still be a meatsicle if we hadn’t come along!” Noomi protested.

  “True, and he could not have survived without our help,” sai
d Indri. “Pal would have killed him if he’d come out of hibernation on his own; he has evinced no knowledge of how to operate the Vishnu, so would have died a slow death in the asteroid field where we found the ship; he would quickly have been robbed or killed after reaching a system, if he’d been able to. Objectively, I think the scales are fairly balanced, Wormwood.”

  “I do not disagree,” said Rastheln’iq. “Wormwood” was a derogatory name given to him for his crimes against the sentient beings of known space. “However, Tully may evict us at his pleasure. We should never forget that.”

  “Ha!” snorted Noomi. “If he tries that, he’ll find himself evicted!”

  Indri, amused by the thought, smiled wanly.

  “In Bringle society, the women are the rulers and the men the workers,” said Noomi Bloodgood. The Bringle were an animalistic species that had interbred with humans to produce the Tatar race. The Bringle D.N.A. was highly adaptable, making such interbreeding common. The species brought conquered races into their Dominion by this method, making them full citizens.

  “There is a reward for each of us,” reminded the Vir.

  Indri glanced at Rastheln’iq with alarm in his large black eyes. “You don’t think –”

  “I do,” put in the Tatar glumly. “Let’s hope he never gets really hard up for cash.”

  “Why do you need me?” Tully grumbled. “You’re always telling me I get into trouble and I want to get back to Cyat.”

  “You have been good at scrounging supplies,” Indri Mindsinger explained. “And Wormwood suggested that you would be good camouflage. Anyone looking for any of us would not expect to find us in the company of a human.”

  Tully shrugged. “I guess that makes sense.”

  The Delphite priest found him all too agreeable, which was not in his nature as displayed over the past seven months. Of course, it was a considerably shorter period for the four refugees, due to the manner in which faster-than-light travel worked: The jump a ship made was practically instantaneous for its occupants, but in real space, a week passed. Actually, the four had been in each other’s company only a few weeks. Still, his behavior was puzzling. Perhaps the strain of his circumstances was fading with the presence of Cyat, and his gruff exterior was finally melting. Tully had to have been in some sort of shock after being awakened. Indri, being a priest, was quite in touch with his spirit, and decided to offer his counsel to the human.

  “You seem quite content with Cyat,” the Delph said.

  “I’m crazy about her,” Tully said, gazing at Indri with his chocolate brown eyes.

  “What about setting her loose?”

  The Earthman shook his head. “That’s crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking. I need Cyat.”

  “You need her?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not human.”

  “Delph fall in love like many of the races in the Imperium,” countered Indri. “The emotion is not unique to humans.”

  “You’d know what I was talking about if you’d ever been in love like I am,” explained Tully.

  Indri Mindsinger was about to reply when a flash of red and silver came into his mind – a moment before two Templars came into view. They wore their traditional garb, silver berzelium armor on their torso, with a large collar-like protector and the lower portions of all four limbs, and all-covering red reflection cloth underneath. Helmets covered their features, a design that erased their individuality and made them anonymous brothers in arms.

  The Delph gently pushed Tully into a side street in the direction of the spaceport. The pair hurried back to their shuttle.

  Indri Mindsinger called an emergency meeting when he returned to the Vishnu. All four crewmembers attended.

  Though the ship had no true captain, the Delphite priest acted as spokesman for the group, because of his racial attributes and because he was the only one with leadership experience, both as a priest and as a freedom fighter. He was that rare individual in Delph society – a natural leader. Descended from herd animals that roamed the seas of Shadut, the Delph homeworld, the members of the race were more comfortable with group decisions and following a strong leader. They’d made excellent subordinates in the Concordat Federation stellar navy, and now served the Imperium equally well. Naturally curious, they were eager explorers, and much of humanity’s knowledge about known space had come from them. Their territory, before being formally absorbed into the Imperium seven centuries earlier, was the second largest after the Republic of Earth’s, followed by the Viridian Federation and the Tatar Confederation. The sizes of the Bringle Dominion and the Layeb Instrumentality were not precisely known. These six interstellar governments were the great powers of known space.

  Upon hearing the Delph’s account, Rastheln’iq said, “We should stay where we are. An unannounced hasty departure would draw attention to us. If we stay aboard the Vishnu, the Templars have virtually no chance of finding us. We should leave when we are scheduled to leave or pay another docking fee.” They had already paid for a week, and a few days remained before their scheduled stay was over. “If things still look bad at that time, we can stay longer.”

  Indri concurred, signifying his feeling by the nodding of his large, bald head. “A good idea. Tully and I had started a business transaction today. He will have to finish it without me.”

  “Perhaps not necessary but prudent,” Rastheln’iq agreed. “There is very little reason for any of us to leave the Vishnu.” By “us”, the Vir meant the three escaped convicts, for the human Tully was not sought by the authorities.

  “Tully can run any errand we need run,” Noomi Bloodgood put in.

  “But I don’t want to be away from Cyat,” the Earthman complained.

  “Then take her with you!” the Tatar girl exclaimed in a frustrated tone.

  So, the next day, he did.

  Ensign Joseph P. Tull of the Republic of Earth stellar navy should not have been on the Vishnu that day in 2302 when the prototype ship disappeared, being flung into the region of space later known as the Borderlands. His father, a prominent member of society, had pulled a few strings to get his son onto the ship. In his father’s eyes, Joe had not amounted to much in his thirty years on Earth, and his father was determined to see this change. Joe was expected to take over the family business in due time, and, in his father’s opinion, he was not ready to do so. A stint in the stellar navy was supposed to change that, and, as the elder Tull reckoned, serving on the first faster-than-light ship couldn’t hurt his son’s chances for recognition.

  There had been no way to actually test the Overdrive – the prototype being called Stardrive – other than to put it on a ship and go. All the equations and computer simulations promised success. They were wrong.

  Tully had rued the day he’d enlisted every day – until the day he met Cyat. Now, he could not imagine life without her, so he did as Noomi suggested, and brought her with him as he concluded the business Indri and he had begun the day before. This was the acquisition of several inexpensive but vital items. It seemed they were always thinking of something they’d forgotten at the last port.

  In the Republic of Earth navy, Tully had acquired a reputation as something of a scrounger and wheeler dealer. He was the man to see when one of the crew needed something – unofficially. He was the crewman who made deals with other ships in the fleet to barter goods, running a small black market. Captains looked the other way, as long as the operation did not interfere with the running of their ships, for it was good for crew morale, as well as obtaining the occasional vital part that would take weeks to get through normal channels.

  Of course, that was before the Vishnu and faster than light travel. Goods became much easier to obtain after the advent of Overdrive. But that was after the disaster of the loss of the Vishnu on its maiden voyage, during Tully’s fourteen century hibernation.

  The Earthman came out of the general store with a box full of a variety of items, some of which were for use in the galley. Tully had recentl
y been craving his infamous Diablo-9 hot sauce, which he intended on introducing his fellow crewmates to for turning him into their errand boy.

  “Do you like spicy food, honey?” he asked Cyat, who was now clothed in garb more appropriate for the public. Tully had spent a fair amount of his own money equipping the girl with a new wardrobe.

  The speckled girl nodded. “Yes. Spicy food makes spicy life.”

  “Okay,” said Tully, grinning at the simple philosophy, “but don’t use too much. It’ll burn – well, it’ll burn whatever it touches. Bunch’a wise guys, making me their errand boy. And it’s my ship, even!”

  “You must like them a lot,” remarked Cyat, her coppery hair fluttering slightly in the breeze.

  For a moment, the Earthman did not reply. Then, he said, “They’re all right, I guess. The Vishnu’d be a lonely place with just Pal for company. He’s swell to talk to, but he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t play cards and he doesn’t get jokes.

  “For a bunch of criminals, they’re all right. I’ve never seen them hurt anyone. In fact, they go out of their way not to hurt anyone … anyone who wasn’t trying to hurt one of them, I mean. They, uh, we handled those pirates real swell. They had it coming. They were going to steal the Vishnu and kill us all to do it. I let myself get captured as a distraction, which let the others attack by surprise.”

  “I notice Indri Mindsinger often speaks for you.”

  “Well, yeah, he speaks for us. That doesn’t mean he’s the leader,” Tully explained quickly. “I’m just an ordinary sailor. I wasn’t trained to speak or parley. I’m a navy man through and through.”

  The two fell silent as they walked through the streets of Freeport. Several minutes passed before either spoke. Finally, Tully broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking … how do you feel about getting married?”

  “If that’s what you desire,” responded Cyat.

  “Not the most resounding ‘yes’, but I guess it’ll do,” said the human glumly.