Book 2 - Starfishers by Glen Cook

writer?” She knew damned
well that he was. Or that he pretended to be. He had whispered to
her about it . . . “The name sounds so
literary, somehow.”
    “I try, yes.” Was she going to expose the Pale
Imperator?
    No. She did not push it. Nor did she thrust with anything from
her arsenal of needles.
    “What made you decide to sign up?” she asked.
    “Unemployment.”
    “A space plumber? You’re kidding. You must be on the
blacklist.”
    “Yeah. Sort of. Somebody’s. What about
you?”
    “The money.”
    The vibrations of hatred had begun mellowing out. She was
controlling herself superbly.
    BenRabi let it flow. He hurt too much to fence, or to probe
about her mission. The armed truce persisted till the lighter
reached the Starfisher.
    Moyshe did not forget that she was Sangaree, that she would
drink his blood happily. He simply tabled the facts for the time
being.
    Hundreds of her people had died because of him. Her children
were dying. She would do something. The Sangaree tradition of
honor, of Family responsibility, would compel
her . . . 
    But she would not act right away. She had come here on a
mission. She would complete that first. He could relax for a
while.
    As introspective and morality-stricken as he sometimes became,
he could not feel guilty about The Broken Wings. Nor about its
aftermath. Humanity and Sangaree were at war, and the Sangaree had
fired the opening shot. That it was a subterranean war, fought at
an almost personal level, did not matter. Nor did the fact that
only humanity perceived a war, that the Sangaree were just in
business. Battles were battles. Casualties were casualties, no
matter how or why they went down.
    Most of his associates and contemporaries hated the Sangaree,
but to him they were just people. People he had to hurt sometimes,
because of what they did and represented.
    He snorted. The most bigoted man alive could say the same thing
and mean it.
    The whole stardust trade turned his stomach.
    “The trouble with me is, I don’t love or hate
anything,” he murmured.
    “What?”
    “Sorry. Thinking with my mouth in gear.”
    His mood left nothing counting. Nothing could move him. The pain
tablets had kicked him into nirvana. Or into a depthless black pit
where the light of emotion simply could not shine. He was not sure
which.
    He did not care. He did not give a damn about anything. Instead,
he immersed himself in the mystery he called Mouse.
    BenRabi believed he knew Mouse better than did anyone but the
Admiral. A lot of one another had leaked across during their teamed
operations. These little flare-ups in the secret war were slowly
melting them, molding them . . . 
    And still Mouse remained a mobile enigma.
    Mouse scared hell out of benRabi.
    Mouse was the only man he knew who had killed someone with his
bare hands.
    Killing had not become a social dodo. But the personal touch had
been removed. Murder had become mechanized, its soul and
involvement eliminated. It had been that way for so long that most
civilians could not endure the emotions they suffered if they
entered a killing rage.
    Their brains shorted. They went zombie. And nothing
happened.
    Anybody could push a button and hurl a missile to obliterate a
ship of a thousand souls. A lot of timid little anybodies had.
    The same anybody could sleep without dreaming the following
night. The involvement was with the button, not the bang.
    Ample opportunities arose in nice remote space battles with
Sangaree, McGraw pirates, or in the marque-and-reprisal antics of
minor governments, for that kind of killing. But to do a man face
to face, with hands or knife or gun . . . It
was too personal.
    Confederation men did not like to get too close to anyone. Not
even to end a life. A man knew he was in too deep if the urge
arose.
    The People of Now wanted no faces on their haunts.
    BenRabi was free-associating, and unable to escape the flight of
his thoughts. Mouse. Interpersonal relationships. The two joined
forces