Book 3 - Star's End by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

met the last time I was on Old Earth. The last
time I visited by mother. She wanted out. Her friends
wouldn’t let her go. I arranged it for her. And ended up
sponsoring her.”
    “Sort of like being a foster parent,” Mouse
explained.
    “Guess she’d be eighteen now. I haven’t
thought about her in ages. You shouldn’t have mentioned her,
Mouse. Now you’ve got me worried.”
    “Hey, don’t. Max will look out for her.”
    “Maybe. But that’s not right, putting it on somebody
else. Is there any way I could send her a letter now and then, Amy?
Just to let her know I’m all right and thinking about her?
I’d let you or Jarl write it if you wanted. You could even
run it through the crypto computer to make sure it’s
innocent.”
    “This’s just a kid?” Amy demanded.
    “Yeah. She reminded me a lot of me when I came off Old
Earth. Awful lost. I thought I could help out by sponsoring her.
And then I kind of ran out when the Bureau sent us out here. I told
her we’d be back in a couple of months. It’s been
almost fourteen.”
    “I’ll ask Jarl. He lets a little mail go out. Some of us
have relatives outside. But it’s slow.”
    “That doesn’t matter. Amy, you’re a jewel. I
love you.”
    “Well, if you’re going to get mushy,” Mouse
said, standing. “I’ve got to run. A citizenship class.
It’s from hunger, Moyshe. Me and Emily Hopkins and this
fascist bastard of a teacher . . . Maybe
I’ll hurt the arm again. Get back in here so I can miss a few
too. Behave. Do what the doctor lady says. Or I’ll wring your
neck.” He made his exit before Moyshe could embarrass him
with many thanks-for-comings.
    “You’re awful quiet today, honey,” benRabi
said after a while. Perhaps if the doctor had not been
there . . . 
    “I’m just tired. We’re still doing double
shifts and barely keeping our heads above water. We’re going
to be in the Yards a long time. Assuming
Danion
doesn’t fall apart before we get there. Assuming the sharks
don’t knock us apart.”
    “You’ve mentioned these Yards about fifty times and
wouldn’t tell me about them. Do you trust me enough
now?”
    “They’re what the name sounds like. Where we build
and fix our ships. Moyshe, you’re not going anywhere for a
while. Tell me about you.”
    “What?”
    “I met you the very first day. Way back on Carson’s,
when you signed your contract. We lived together for months before
I even found out you’ve got a daughter. I don’t know
anything about you.”
    “Greta isn’t my daughter, honey. I just helped a kid
who needed somebody . . . ”
    “It’s almost the same thing, isn’t
it?”
    “Legally, I guess. On paper. They’d have trouble
making it stand up in court.”
    “Tell me. Everything.”
    There was little else to do but talk. He talked.
    The doctor, lurking in the background watching suspiciously, had
made it clear that he would be stuck here for a while.
    “All right. Let me know when it gets boring.”
    He had been born in North America on Old Earth, to Clarence
Hardaway and Myra McClennon. He had hardly known his father. His
mother, for reasons he still did not understand, had elected to
raise him at home instead of burying him in the State Creche. Only
a few Social Insurees raised their children.
    His early years had been typical for home-raised S.I. children.
Little supervision, little love, little education. He had been
running with a kid gang before he was eight.
    He had been trine when he had seen his first offworlders.
Spikes, they had called them. These had been Navy men in crisp
dress blacks diligently pursuing the arcane business of
offworlders.
    Those uniforms had captured his imagination. They had become an
obsession. He had started keying information out of his
mother’s home data retrieval terminal. He had not had the
education to decipher most of it. He had started teaching himself,
building from the ground up toward the things he so desperately
wanted to know.
    At ten he had