I shoved Lajoolie off me just as the ship heaved in the opposite direction. She steadied herself by grabbing Nimbus’s chair; the chair was firmly secured to the floor and did not budge, even with Lajoolie’s great weight flung against it. I caught hold of the desk, which was also bolted down — in fact, all the furniture in the room was fastened in place, except for the desk’s chair, which slid on metal railings. This was a Wise Safety Precaution in case of Navigational Upset… for when Royal Hemlock shifted again, the chair slammed forward as far as its rails would permit, going ‹WHUNK› at the end like an ax hitting wood.

"What is happening?" I cried.

"Something’s grabbed us," Aarhus answered. The ship lurched again. "Something damned clumsy."

"Could it be the Shaddill?" I asked.

"Don’t know," Aarhus said. "My X-ray vision isn’t working today. If either of you can see through the hull, go ahead and have a peek."

I recognized this as sarcasm. However, it reminded me that Festina said this ship had no windows — only exterior cameras which would not be working now. As a result, no one on board could know what had seized us… which made me feel better, since I was not the only one waiting in ignorance to see what transpired next.

"It’s likely the Shaddill," Lajoolie said, full of fear.

"Or our navy," Aarhus answered. "Captain Kapoor thought we got away from New Earth without being noticed… but if anyone spotted us, the Admiralty might have sent a ship chasing close on our tail."

"It’s not the Shaddill or your navy. Lucky us."

These words came from Nimbus. With a sudden whoosh, he expanded from hard-rock form to his usual manlike mist, holding the small Starbiter steady as the ship continued to rock. "To be accurate," he continued, "our rescuers don’t look like Shaddill or the Outward Fleet on long-range scans."

"How could you do a long-range scan?" Aarhus asked.

"I didn’t. My daughter did."

Of course, we demanded to know how Nimbus had tapped into Starbiter’s powers; but the cloud man was reluctant to explain. He seemed worried we might think he had taken undue liberties, for he kept saying things like, "I’m completely trained to deal with any medical situation," and, "It’s my most basic function, testing a female Zarett to make sure her systems are working" — all of which made him sound most guilty, as if he had done something improper to the child. When he finally revealed the truth, however, he had not done anything wicked to Starbiter…

He had merely tickled her.

Earlier, when we discussed using the little girl to send a distress signal, Nimbus had recognized the worth of our plan, even if he was not so keen about the suggestion to incinerate the baby until she cried, "Wahh!" Instead, he wrapped around her in a protective shell, then carefully eased microscopic bits of himself inside his daughter’s body. The process was similar to the way he moved through Mama Starbiter’s tissues, but on a very tiny scale. A few of Nimbus’s cells worked their way through the child, found the small knot of glands that permitted FTL broadcasting, and stimulated those glands.

The result was no more than an itch… like a scratch in your throat that makes you go, "Ahem!" over and over. Little Starbiter responded to the itch with a sort of irritable clucking — a cranky collection of trans-light noises which could never be mistaken for words but which were apt to attract attention from anyone close enough to hear.

And that is exactly what happened. Somebody had heard the signals and came to investigate. Nimbus watched the newcomers’ approach by linking some of his cells to young Starbiter’s long-range scan abilities: hiding inside the baby’s eyes to see what her scanners could see. This was the activity that had caused him shame. According to a whispered comment from Lajoolie, male Zaretts were highly averse to using the capabilities of females in any way — Nimbus and the rest of his sex attended to their women’s health needs, but scrupulously avoided any action which might be construed as Taking Over The Driver’s Seat.

What an excellent quality that is! They should preach this philosophy to males everywhere.

"It wasn’t wrong tickling the girl to send a Mayday," the cloud man muttered. "Uclod clearly wanted that, and he’s her owner. So I was just carrying out the owner’s wishes, right? But actually linking myself to her, and seeing through her scanners… well, I had to keep watch, didn’t I? Uclod would want that too, even if he didn’t say so explicitly. He’d want to know if the Shaddill were coming, or the human navy…"

"So who is it?" Aarhus interrupted. He had allowed Nimbus to ramble in guilt-laden fashion about linking with his daughter, but the sergeant was obviously impatient for a Situational Report. "You only started sending the signal an hour ago," Aarhus said. "Who was close enough to respond in so little time?"

"I couldn’t see exactly," Nimbus replied. "Starbiter doesn’t have enough control to focus her scanners on anything in particular. And she doesn’t have much attention span either; I tried to keep her looking in one direction, but her gaze kept wandering all over the place." He added defensively, "That’s perfectly normal for a child her age."

"Sure, sure," Aarhus said. "But what did you see?"

"Mostly a bunch of blurs. Nothing large enough to be the Shaddill or even a navy ship. I think it’s a swarm of smaller craft: single-person runabouts or family-sized yachts."

"Hmm," Lajoolie said. "That explains the jostling when they took Hemlock in tow. This ship is so big, we’d have to be grappled by a whole pack of smaller vessels. They must have had trouble coordinating who pulled which direction when." She looked to Aarhus, obviously wondering if he agreed. However, the sergeant had other things on his mind; he was staring upward with an unhappy expression on his face.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Trouble," he said. "Unless I miss my guess, we’ve just been rescued by an outreach crusade." He grimaced, then looked around at the rest of us. "Hope you haven’t got anything planned for the next ten years — we’ve just become Cashling slaves."

Devising A Suitable Ransom

Lajoolie’s face blanched to an unattractive shade of yellow. "Are you sure?" she whispered.

"It’s a good guess," Aarhus said. "Before Hemlock got zapped, we were headed for the planet Jalmut. That’s a Cashling world; most likely, the ships that answered our Mayday are Cashling too. But the Cashlings almost never travel in groups — they’re too egotistical. Get a bunch together in separate ships, and five minutes later, they fly off in different directions. The only time Cashling ships stay in a pack is when one of their prophets organizes a crusade."

"And what is a crusade?" I asked. "A religious pilgrimage?"

"They get mad if you use the word ‘religious’ — most Cashlings are devout atheists, and fly into tantrums at talk of deities or souls. But the truth is that Cashlings are religious as hell. Fanatic believers. They just switch beliefs every other day."

"How can that be?"

"Doesn’t make sense to me either," the sergeant replied. "But Cashlings believe in something called Pu Naram… usually translated into English as ‘Godly Greed.’ Don’t ask me to define it, because every time you blink, a new prophet shows up to put a different spin on what Godly Greed means. One week, it’s all about taking care of yourself and piss on anyone else; the next week, it’s switched to everybody working in harmony so you can all get rich together; then it’s about compassion and helping others, because tossing pennies to cripples really boosts your ego." He rolled his eyes. "Cashlings always brag how they have a single unified culture, unlike humans and other species at our level of evolution… but the only unity I see is them flitting from one prophet to another, like flies trying to find the smelliest heap of manure.