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on the high side of the Izar, tall enough to catch breezes over the
Wall, breezes not tainted by ship exhaust and slaughter-houses. It was
a big place, built in a square about a large central court with a fountain and
trees and flower beds. And children everywhere.
 Kak! Grinder. They all yours?
He grinned.  That s what their mothers tell me. Ac-tually, no.
Couple of the youngest are my grandkids. Would you believe it, Luna? Me,
a grandpa.
She watched him beaming down on the busy scene and felt a coldness start to
gather under her ribs.
There was something so ... proprietorial and ... oh ... lethal about him.
This is my place, he said. My place. My house. My children. My women. If he
starts thinking about me like that. . . .
 You d best let me have a look at Lerdo s documentation. I have to know what
I m talking about when I meet your son.
6. Worming into Haundi Zurgile
1
Worm slipped the
Kinu Kanti into Hutsartes atmo-sphere above the major continent of the Wild
Half, the hemisphere the Behilarr hadn t bothered to settle yet. He went
warily at first, then relaxed as the readouts told him that what he d picked
up about the place was true, not enough security to keep out a tesh fly.
When he was at a level to go on visual screens, he looked at the tangle of
unsavory vegetation sliding be-neath him and decided the Behilarr didn t have
to worry about anyone coveting this place. He shifted di-rection, went
circumpolar, and began a metal scan of the coastline that belonged
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to the settled continent, keeping the visuals on to give him a look at what
was being probed. Low and slow ate power, but he was op-erating on the Kliu s
credit chip, so he d topped up at the transfer station and was feeling
comfortably prodi-gal at the moment.
He slowed further when he began picking up a sig-nal as a string of islands
came into the screen.
Metallic smear, size uncertain, shape uncertain he was nearly on top of it
before he could nail which island it was on.
There was a hollow in the vegetation with withered edges, enough to suggest a
ship had put down here and the very faint traces he was picking up had to mean
it was a smuggler s ship, equipped to escape most detec-tion.
He chortled as he changed direction again and started back across
the ocean.  Lylunda Elang.
Gotcha.
He set the
Kinu Kanti down in a small stony canyon in the coast range of a continent in
the Wild
Half and started cycling through the shutdown/conceal proce-dures, brooding
all the while over the last thing his fa-ther had told him.
Keep those scivs sweet, Worm. They ve got your brothers. Two of them now
because you din t bother using that useless lump a gristle atop your neck You
shouldda known we couldda fetched Xman out of contract easy enough. I tell you
to your face, we gotta get
Mort loose, he s the only one of the lot of you who s got the guts to run this
place. Snake over t

next Rift, he been shooting eyes this way. So you keep em happy till we get
that girl and make the

trade.
Worm shivered when he thought of his older brother and some of the things that
Mort had done to give him the rep that kept Snake and Herbie and the other
Riftmen backed off. If Mort hadn t been his brother and blood was sacred after
all, he d have been just as happy to leave him scrabbling about
Pillory scurfing off other gits as murderous as him.
Time to do the sweetening, to let the Kliu know he was on the job and making
time. He worked over the message for several minutes, then played it back. Am
down on Hutsarte, Behilarr Colony. Have got sugges-tive though inconclusive
evidence the smuggler is here. Will be going undercover for close-up
observation. Will keep under advisement the listed possible agents of
Excavations Ltd.
and report if any such are spotted. Clandestine conditions of
investigation require limiting exposure to detection, so contact will be
sporadic for the next few weeks.
It seemed adequate, saying as little as possible while giving the impression
he was being forthcoming.
As good as anything Xman could write.
Xman was the talker of the family, the tongue that was quicker even than
Mort s knifes. Worm sighed, missing his brother a lot as he coded
and compressed the message, squirted it on its way.  Choke on that, stinking
scivs.
He waited a while longer, watching the readouts to be sure the squirt hadn t
pinned him, then he extracted the ship s flikit and once again started across
the ocean.
2
After he hid the flikit, Worm spent the rest of the night trudging
across prickly wasteland. He detested walking, he hated all this ugly
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