He was at the hatch when the first of the Starfarers showed up, and he did not like the look on this surly bunch of musclebounds at all.
“Hey, boys, take it easy. The Didi’s coming.” He waved them on in as if he weren’t the least bit impressed by their menacing appearance.
The leader backhanded him with such efficiency that he careened from side to side of the narrow passageway before falling in an embarrassing heap to the deck.
“Really!” came the sultry remonstrance from an Acorna Calum didn’t recognize. He blinked, as much to clear the shock of that backhanded blow as to make sure his eyes still functioned. “Was that necessary? Poor Calum doesn’t have many brains anyway, and the ones he’s got don’t need to be rattled. He’ll do whatever you tell him anyway. He’s been trained to.”
The attention of the heavies was immediately focused on the vision in black. Calum vaguely remembered Judit, Mercy, and Acorna giggling over some of the outfits that had been concocted to either emphasize or hide her horn. This outfit was not only skintight, but the high collar disguised the long fall of Acorna’s silvery mane. It was cleverly attached to the ravishing black hat which sat at a jaunty angle on Acorna’s head. The peaked front completely hid the horn and almost covered her right eye.
“Let me introduce myself: Badini, the Didi ofKezdets best…” she paused, her voice heavy with significance, “… establishment. You wouldn’t happen to have any children you consider excess baggage, would you? They certainly didn’t down there.” She pointed a contemptuous gloved hand down, indicating Rushima, which they had so obviously just left. Acorna’s gloves effectively disguised the differences in her hands, and her cloven hooves were hidden within the apparently stack-soled boots just visible under her long pantaloons.
“What’s a Didi?”
A disembodied voice echoed outside. “Bring them aboard. I want to question them if they’ve been on Rushima,” said a woman’s voice.
“Anything you say,” drawled Acorna’s imitation Didi Badini in what Calum decided was an excellent imitation of the real bonk-shop owner’s voice.
With an elegant swaying step, Acorna the “Didi” made her way past the first of the guards, deliberately brushing against him in such an enticing fashion that Calum hoped she wasn’t overdoing her role.
“I suppose you’d better come, too,” she said, deigning to notice Calum just before she went through the hatch. She put lust the right inflection in her voice to suggest to anyone listening that Calum was of no importance whatever.
Of such little importance, in fact, that when he had been given the most cursory glance by the hard-faced woman standing slightly ahead of two obvious henchmen, he was immediately hauled away, probably by the man who had backhanded him. As his collar was tightly held by whoever kept pushing him forward, he couldn’t be sure. But he was pushed down a few miles of antigrav tubes to the bowels of the enormous spaceship and shoved into a bare cell. It was equipped with two slabs of some plastic, strapped up against opposing walls, a sanitary appliance, and that was all. Not even a water supply.
“Nor any Drop to Drink,” he murmured, then reminded himself that this cell was likely bugged. So he released the fastening on one slab and sat down on it. And began to worry about Acorna. Could she pull off her fancy-dress persona? And what good would it do? These people were the type who’d think nothing of spacing superfluous bodies. He was suddenly not so happy to have been cast in the role of “expendably unimportant.”
“WHERE did you say you came from?” asked one of the three facing her.
“Kezdet,” Acorna promptly replied. “I’m looking for … replacements.”
“Replacements for what?” the woman asked, but the first man laughed.
“Dirtsiders need certain types of entertainment I’m sure this woman provides, Nueva.”
“Oh. And you had no luck on Rushima?” This seemed to amuse the woman.
Acorna snorted contemptuously. “If it isn’t flooded out, its desert or burned out. Not what I was toFd to expect,” Acorna said indignantly. “No one would even come out to speak to us, no matter where we landed. Ruined one outfit in the wet, and another has sand just driven into the seams.” She let her voice flatten with annoyance. “Wasted time and fuel. As I said, I’m Didi Badini. …” She cocked her head, as if she expected to be informed of her interrogator’s name.