Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [66]
Con’s shoulders relaxed but not his tone. ‘Don’t you let Pellegrini forget it!’ He spat the name out like poison and waved the barrel of the rifle at her. ‘Let’s go.’
* * * *
Con ushered them out to the gate in the wall.
Mira passed Vito to Djeserit as they passed through the coldlock. When they reached the clump of thorn-grass, Mira dropped back behind the korm’s bulk.
‘Still, korm,’ she breathed while Trin and Con made empty gestures of farewell.
It looked over its shoulder at her with curiosity.
She put her fingers to her lips and knelt down, feeling among the thorns. Spines pricked her through her gloves as she lifted a pack free and its weight tripped her forward. The korm caught her with one strong arm.
Con spun around. ‘What is it?’
Mira hung the pack on the korm’s armlet and stepped in front. She concealed her bloodstained glove. ‘I tripped,’ she said. Nothing more. Too much explanation would make it worse.
Con squinted in the fading light to see her. With little Jessa clinging to his legs, he pushed the gate open. He watched Mira with hard eyes as she went to pass by him. Suddenly he reached out to tug her arm. With quick movements he searched her, ignoring the others. Before she could utter any protest, he pushed her out of the gate.
Trin had already walked on but the korm was waiting for her with the pack hidden from Con’s view. It whistled softly.
‘Grazi,’ Mira answered.
They moved on a way before Mira dared look back to the casa. Loris would be there, watching, she was sure.
She raised her hand in farewell.
* * * *
TEKTON
Tekton had not experienced such a sense of jubilation since the Chancellor’s daughter, Doris Mulek, had agreed to conjoin bodies—and that, of course, had not been because of love or some such blighted theory but because of the sheer pleasure of having set out to climb a rung on the ladder to exponential success and succeeding.
An abundance of shaped metal alloy on a virtually unknown rock on the edge of the Orion system—what a delectable coup!
Well, that was what his free-mind thought, anyway. And for some reason or other it seemed to get louder and more bombastic by the day. His logic-mind was also quite intrigued but busied itself planning ways to investigate this far-off planet without alerting the rest of the nosy snitches on Belle-Monde. It concocted an elaborate ruse of dejection and failure (Tekton’s) and pondered ways to obtain a feed from the Scolar hub. It considered and discarded several options: seduce an astronomein to gain use of their coded farcast; bribe an astronomein; hold an astronomein hostage, etc, etc ... none of which rated greater than a thirty-six per cent chance of success.
The seduction of course got his free-mind’s attention and his logic-mind shuddering (all those flooding neurochemicals positively drowned out any sensible cognitive process).
It had been some time since Tekton had lain with Doris and the titillation of Dieter Miranda’s thighs had been a teasing spray of water to his parched libido. When oh when, bleated his free-mind, will I get some agreeable intercourse?
When you‘ve done the work you should, you tosser.
Tekton’s free-mind subsided in a bit of a stink after that and his logic-mind gleefully took over planning. It began with a general, innocuous enough data rummage around Orion’s inhabited planets.
While pretending to be comet hunting, Tekton scooped off a holo-atlas of the micro section of space that Jo-Jo Rasterovich had identified. It contained over fifty stars and three times as many planets. More detailed mapping could be, the overview said, accessed from the Scolar hub archives.
So who do I have to murder to earn a research trip to Scolar? Tekton asked his moud.
Murder? it replied, confused. I’m not sure that would be apposite.
For Sole’s sake, order some wit to be instated at your next service, Tekton grumbled.
The moud flashed an extensive menu up onto his workfilm. Certainly, Godhead. Please choose from the list.
Tekton gave an irritable sigh. There was no