A familiar-looking dead man-and not just familiar looking. Becker knew who the fellow was from the torn and stinky pant leg.
“No wonder you were carrying on,” Becker said aloud to Roadkill. “It’s your old scratching post, hitching an unauthorized ride.”
He put his hands under the android’s armpits and started hauling him out of the cargo hold. There was a pulse. Funny. These older models didn’t have a true circulatory system. There was something strangely familiar about that pulse though, and as soon as Becker hauled the guy back to the command deck and heard the little steady bleep again, he knew what it -was.
“Well, RK, here’s our little homing pigeon, giving away our position with every beat of his heavy metal heart. Shee-it. I wonder if you can hear this thing through wormholes?”
Kisia Manjari pitched a fit when she saw what had become of her mechanoid henchmen. “He killed them!” she told her uncle. “Smashed them with his junk then took off with one of themstole it. Stole my KEN unit! He can’t get away with that-oh, no.”
“Certainly not, my dear,” Uncle Edacki said smoothly. He could see the scene in question on her portable comscreen.
“Most unwise of him indeed.”
“I wonder why KEN6^0 doesn’t answer when I try to reach him,” Kisia said. “He is still operational, according to his sonid button. He should answer and obey my command to kill the junk man and bring his ship back here.”
“Hmmm, perhaps,” Uncle Edacki said. “But, Kisia darling, are you sure that would be the best use of this fortuitous situation?”
“What do you mean fortuitous? They were my units! Now who will help me assemble my fleet?”
“I’ll get you some others. But for the time being, you say you are still receiving the signal from 640’s sonid, and 6-40 is presumed to be with Becker in his craft going-where? To their next destination. Which will be-where do you suppose?”
“Back to where he found the horns?” she asked, the light dawning finally.
“And the sonid signal, with its tiny trail of electrons ” “Will let me track him and everything!” Kisia said, very excited. “Oh, Uncle, may I?”
“Yes, sweetie. You are doing so well today-first finding the horns, then cleverly arranging for your unit to be captured so we can track Becker by the signal. Just for that you may handpick a crew and take command of the MQcu) in order to follow Becker s trail.”
“Oh, Uncle, you are the best!” “Nonsense, my dear, you’ve earned the privilege.” Edacki Ganoosh signed off with a feeling of satisfaction at a job well done. He would have his horns one way or the other now, both with Kisia tracking her android to find Becker s source, and then there was the little matter of sending the Pandora to follow a similar sonid implanted in certain key employees-such as Yasmin, who was even now emitting her signal from her hiding place aboard the ShahrazaS.
Honestly, the things a girl had to do to get out of jail. Confronting her almost-ex-husband wasn’t so bad-there had always been a better-than-average chance he might try to buy her off, if she had been able to act sad enough about poor dead Tapha. Well, she hadn’t. Tapha was no great loss to anyone. And really, she would have almost paid for the opportunity to see Hafiz’s face when he realized what the powdered horn was. That made up for all the cracks about her acting and dancing ability when they were married.
Actually, what with being supplied all the security codes she didn’t already know, it had been no trouble to smuggle herself aboard the Shahrazcu), like her bosses told her. It wasn’t that Yasmin wasn’t perfectly comfortable either, even though she felt that as Hafiz’s senior wife she should have been occupying the master suite instead of the quarters generally assigned to the pedicunst. She chose those herself because, as the pedicurist was one of the lesser servants, her quarters were farthest away from those of the family and other crew members. Here Yasmin could be as inconspicuous as a little mousie while all the time the transmitters she would sprinkle about the Shahrazad could send signals back to her bosses so they could monitor its movement.