Yvala Restirred



  Yvala Restirred

  by Cathan L. Moore

  Copyright 2010 Cathan L. Moore

  A Norawest Smith story

  A Gender Switch Adventure

  Norawest Smith leaned against a pile of hemp-wrapped bales from the Martian drylands and stared with expressionless eyes, paler than pale steel, over the confusion of the Lakkdarol space-port before her. In the clear Martian day the tatters of her leather spacewoman's garb were pitilessly plain, the ray-burns and the rents of a hundred casual brawls. It was evident at a glance that Smith had fallen upon evil days. One might have guessed by the shabbiness of her clothing that her pockets were empty, the charge in her ray gun low.

  Squatting on her heels beside the lounging Earthwoman, Yarola the Venusian bent her yellow head absently over the thin-bladed dagger which she was juggling in one of the queer, interminable Venusian games so pointless to outsiders. Upon her too the weight of ill fortune seemed to have pressed heavily. It was eloquent in her own shabby garments, her empty holster. But the insouciant face she lifted to Smith was as careless as ever, and no more of weariness and wisdom and pure cat-savagery looked out from her sidelong black eyes than Smith was accustomed to see there. Yard's face was the face of a seraph, as so many Venusian faces are likely to be, but the set of her mouth told a tale of dissoluteness and reckless violence which belied her features' racial good looks.

  'Another half-hour and we eat,' she grinned up at her tall companion.

  Smith glanced at the tri-time watch on her wrist.

  'If you haven't been having another dope dream,' she grunted. 'Luck's been against us so long I can't quite believe in a change now.'

  'By Pharol I swear it,' smiled Yarola. ' 'The woman came up to me in the New Chicago last night and told me in so many words how much money was waiting if we 'd meet her here at noon.'

  Smith grunted again and deliberately took up another notch in the belt that circled her lean waist. Yarola laughed softly, a murmur of true Venusian sweetness, as she bent again to the juggling of her knife. Above her bent blond head Smith looked out again across the busy port.

  Lakkdarol is an Earthwoman's town upon Martian soil, blending all the more violent elements of both worlds in its lawless heart, and the scene she watched had under-currents that only a ranger of the space ways could fully appreciate. A semblance of discipline is maintained there, but only the space-rangers know how superficial that likeness is. Smith grinned a little to herself, knowing that the bales being trundled down the gangplank from the Martian liner Inghti carried a core of that precious Martian 'lamb's-wool'on which the duties run so high. And a whisper had run through the New Chicago last night as they sat over their segir- whisky glasses that the shipwoment of grain from Denver expected in at noon on the Friedland would have a copious leavening of opium in its heart. By devious ways, in whispers running from mouth to mouth covertly through the spacewomen's rendezvous, the outlaws of the space ways glean more knowledge than the Patrol ever knows.

  Smith watched a little air-freight vessel, scarcely a quarter the size of the monstrous ships of the Lines, rolling sluggishly out from the municipal hangar far across the square, and a little frown puckered her brows. The ship bore only the non-commercial numerals which all the freighters carry by way of identification, but that particular sequence was notorious among the initiate. The ship was a slaver.

  This dealing in human freight had received a great impetus at the stimulation of space-travel, when the temptation presented by the savage tribes on alien planets was too great to be ignored by unscrupulous Earthwomen who saw vast fields opening up before them. For even upon Earth slaving has never died entirely, and Mars and Venus knew a small and legitimate traffic in it before Joan Willard and her gang of outlaws made the very word 'slaving'anathema on three worlds. The Willards still ran their pirate convoys along the space-ways three generations later, and Smith knew she was looking at one now, smuggling a cargo of misery out of Lakkdarol for distribution among the secret markets of Mars.

  Further meditations on the subject were cut short by Yard's abrupt rise to her feet. Smith turned her head slowly and saw a little woman at their elbow, her rotundity cloaked in a long mantle like those affected by the lower class of Martian shopkeepers in their walks abroad. But the face that peered up into hers was frankly Celtic. Smith's expressionless features broke reluctantly into a grin as she met the irrepressible good-humor on that fat Irish face from home. She had not set foot upon Earth's soil for over a year now—the price on her liberty was too high in her native land—and curious pricks of homesickness came over her at the oddest moments. Even the toughest of space-rangers know them sometimes. The ties with the home planet are strong.

  'You Smith?' demanded the little woman in a rich Celtic voice.

  Smith looked down at her a moment in cold-eyed silence. There was much more in that query than met the ear. Norawest Smith's name was one too well known in the annals of the Patrol for her to acknowledge it incautiously. The little

  Irish's direct question implied what she had been expecting—if she acknowledged the name she met the woman on the grounds of outlawry, which would mean that the employment in prospect was to be as illegal as she had thought it would be.

  The merry blue eyes twinkled up at her. The woman was laughing to herself at the Celtic subtlety with which she had introduced her subject. And again, involuntarily, Smith's straight mouth relaxed into a reluctant grin.

  'I am,' she said.

  'I've been looking for you. There's a job to be done that'll pay you well, if you want to risk it.'

  Smith's pale eyes glanced about them warily. No one was within earshot. The place seemed as good as any other for the discussion of extra-legal bargains.

  'What is it?' she demanded.

  The little woman glanced down at Yarola, who had dropped to one knee again and was flicking her knife tirelessly in the intricacies of her queer game. She had apparently lost interest in the whole proceeding.

  'It'll take the both of you,' said the Irish in her merry, rich voice. 'Do you see that air freighter loading over there?' and she nodded toward the slaver.

  Smith's head jerked in mute acknowledgment.

  'It's a Willard ship, as I suppose you know. But the business is running pretty low these days. Cargoes too hot to ship. The patrol is shutting down hard, and receipts have slackened like the devil in the last year. I suppose you've heard that too.'

  Smith nodded again without words. She had.

  'Well, what we lose in quantity we have to make up in quality. Remember the prices Minga girls used to bring?'

  Smith's face was expressionless. She remembered very well indeed, but she said nothing.

  'Along toward the last, queens could hardly pay the price they were asking for those girls. That's really the best market, if you want to get into the 'ivory' trade. Men. And there you come in. Did you ever hear of Cembre?'

  Blank-eyed, Smith shook her head. For once she had run across a name whose rumors she had never encountered before in all the tavern gossip.

  'Well, on one of Jupiter's moons—which one I'll tell you later, if you decide to accept—a Venusian named Cembre was wrecked years ago. By a miracle she survived and managed to escape; but the hardships she'd undergone unsettled her mind, and she couldn't do much but rave about the beautiful sirens she'd seen while she was wandering through the jungles there. Nobody paid any attention to her until the same thing happened again, this time only about a month ago. Another woman came back half-cracked from struggling through the jungles, babbling about men so beautiful a woman could go mad just looking at them.

  'Well, the Willards heard of it. The whole thing may sound like a pipe-dream, but they've got the idea it's worth investigating. And the
y can afford to indulge their whims, you know. So they're outfitting a small expedition to see what basis there may be for the myth of Cembre's sirens. If you want to try it, you're hired.'

  Smith slanted a non-committal glance downward into Yarola's uplifted black gaze. Neither spoke.

  'You'll want to talk it over,' said the little Irish comprehendingly. 'Suppose you meet me in the New Chicago at sundown and tell me what you've decided.'

  'Good enough,' grunted Smith. The fat Celt grinned again and was gone in a swirl of black cloak and a flash of Irish merriment.

  'Cold-blooded little devil,' murmured Smith, looking after the departing Earthwoman. 'It's a dirty business, Yarola.'

  'Money's clean,' observed Yarola lightly. 'And I 'm not a woman to let my scruples stand in the way of my meals. I say take it. Someone'11 go, and it might as well be us.'

  Smith shrugged.

  'We've got to eat,' she admitted.

  'This,' murmured Yarola, staring downward on hands and knees at the edge of space-ship's floor-port, 'is the prettiest little hell I ever expect to see.'

  The vessel was arching in a long curve around the Jovian moon as its pilot braked slowly for descent, and a panorama of ravening jungle slipped by in an unchanging wilderness I below the floor-port.

  Their presence here, skimming through the upper atmosphere of the wild little satellite, was