When he finally docked, he was in a tearing hurry to reach Delszaki Li’s private quarters and much too worried to care about the very odd design of the ship that had held up the queue for so long, or the plump little woman in fluttery lavender draperies who was clambering down an exit stair much too steep for her short legs. He waved at the lunar-base guards and was passed through on sight, without the formalities of identification and checks for contraband that held up strangers arriving at Maganos Base. An old friend of his from the days at MME was now overseeing the Beneficiation and Extraction Department and let him take a slightly illicit shortcut and hitch a ride on a conveyor belt that was supposed to be carrying pulverized material to the oxygen-extraction plant, allowing Rafik to arrive at Delszaki Li’s quarters shortly after docking and a good ten minutes before he was expected there.
“Where IS she? Is she all right?” he demanded as he pushed through the iris door, too impatient to wait for it to retract its flexible membranes fully.
Gill and Judit were sitting in the anteroom, holding hands. Judit looked as if she had been crying; Gill turned red at the question.
“There is no reason to suppose Acorna is in any difficulty,” Judit said.
Gill swallowed. “Of course not. Acorna can handle anything that comes up, and Calum … well, Calum is very smart, you know, Rafik.” “Calum,” Rafik said, “doesn’t have the common sense the Prophets would give to a canary, and if we’re relying on him to keep Acorna out of trouble, no wonder Uncle Hafiz was worried about her! WHERE IS SHE?”
“Hafiz?” Judit exclaimed. “How did he find out?” ‘
“Find out what?”
“Well…” Judit gestured helplessly. “What was he worried about?”
“Don’t know, can’t find out now.” Rafik explained about the garbled message he had received just before a planetary shield closed down all travel to and communication -with Laboue.
“And you think there may be some danger to Acorna? “
“Whatever it means,” Rafik said, “it can’t be anything good. Communication and trade are the basis of House Harakamians wealth. With Laboue closed off like this, Uncle Hafiz can’t check the odds on any of his, umm, interplanetary operations, or keep tabs on the competition, or do any of his other, umm, normal financial and commercial procedures. He wouldn’t have done this unless something out there had really scared him.” He thought this statement over for a moment. “In fact, I wouldn’t have said there was anything that could make Uncle Hafiz nervous enough to forgo a quarter percent profit on the Skarness Relay … which he will have lost through not being there to authorize a credit exchange before the news of the Relay s failure came through the regular communications channels.”
“Hafiz has advance information on the Skarness Relay?” Gill asked, impressed. “How does he work that?”
Rafik grinned. “You know the Singing Stones of Skarness, in his garden? They’re not just a curiosity-they’re a communications system. Hafiz broke the code. Those rocks know what’s happening on Skarness, no matter where in the galaxy they happen to be.”
“How?”
“How does a clam in an aquarium in the desert know when it would be high tide if the desert were underwater?” Rafik shrugged. “They know, that’s all. At first the Stones weren’t all that useful, because they aren’t interested in human affairs-they think we move too fast and die too soon to be studied-but Uncle Hafiz got one of them to make a small side bet on the Relay with him, and now they’re all following it. He’d sent to tell me to lay off all our bets just before that last message and the Shield closing down … but without his authorization, I couldn’t do it.”
“Delightful as it is to learn these details of sporting events,” Judit said, “I for one should like to find out a little more about what has brought you here in such haste. You don’t know what the threat was?”
Rafik shook his head. “Not precisely. But it must have come from space, not from one of his competitors on Laboue, or there’d be no advantage in invoking the Shield. So we don’t need to worry about Yukata Batsu or any of that southern continent lot. Uncle Hafiz has effectively divided the universe into two separate boxes,” he said somberly. “One box contains Laboue, the other holds the rest of the universe … including whatever threat motivated him to take this step. And whatever it is must concern Acorna.”