Beholder's Eye (27 page)

“No. This Ket is familiar with the area. Thank you again, P’Lka-D’Dsellan. Her Glory-D’Dsellan will hear of how you expedited the mission of this Ket on her behalf.”

“I serve the Hive in all things,” she murmured with obvious pleasure.

RAGEM and Tomas had been able to coax some disquieting information from the drones at the mineral bath. I considered what they told me as my hoverbot danced and jigged its way among dozens of others, the D’Dsellan version of waiting to land. The deaths, or rather disappearances, had originally occurred on the other continent, then stopped. They’d suddenly begun again on this side of the freshwater ocean, but with less frequency. The most recent disappearances had been in this city, which was why Kearn had chosen this spaceport for the
Rigus
out of the seven on D’Dsel. Tomas and others of the crew speculated it was most likely some criminal, perhaps a crazed xenophobe of sorts: somebody a planetary authority could catch.

I looked down at the warmly lit globes below that marked the outer ring of homes of Mixs’ kin and really hoped Tomas was right. And I was wrong.

Abruptly, the hoverbot dropped to within a handsbreath of the ground and halted. The antigrav inside completely dampened both the acceleration and stop; nonetheless, I gulped. As a Ket, I wasn’t the best at high-speed maneuvering. There was no time to collect my thoughts as the door opened and the seat in the ’bot urged me upright.

“Madame Ket.”

Something’s wrong.
I felt my hearts pounding as I took in the somber expressions on the two Panacians standing before me on the landing platform. The surrounding garden was beautifully lit, a lush display of living architecture I’d otherwise have enjoyed examining. “Where is Her Glory-D’Dsellan?” I whispered.

The younger of the two seemed to crumble into herself, her four upper appendages wrapped tightly around her thorax in an expression of grief and despair.

I didn’t hesitate. Mixs’ memory in mine contained the most recent plan of the entire complex. I knew where she would have met me. They called out as I hurried past them, but didn’t otherwise object.

No one did. Every member of Mixs’ family I passed in the convoluted hallways acted oblivious to my presence and my urgency, caught in the paralysis the D’Dsellans felt in the presence of tragedy. I might have been invisible, except that in my haste I bumped into an older drone, then almost tripped over the tools of a builder left abandoned in a doorway, sending them sliding across the polished floor to crash into a wall.

Mixs’ room.
It was a huge expanse, with tables covered in scale models and benches festooned with bits and pieces of construction materials. There wasn’t a chair to be seen—typical of Mixs. This was where she worked, not rested.

I stepped inside very slowly, careful where I placed my bare feet, unsure if what was left of the ceiling would stay in place. No wonder the other D’Dsellans were in a horrified daze.

Titans had battled here.

Trembling, on the verge of losing form, I screamed “Mixs! Mixs!” only to have my voice lock itself somewhere inside. Slipping on broken bits of dreams, I searched the room, hurrying as much as I could without the risk of losing some clue. Then, like a nightmare, I saw it.

A hint of blue glistened along the spiked edge of a shard of glass. I gripped my hoobit like an anchor, resisting the urge to consume and learn. Impulse overcome, for the moment at least, I wrapped the glass in a piece of fabric and tucked it into the carrysack I wore around my waist. The web-flesh would spoil and lose whatever it could tell me within minutes, but I couldn’t cycle here. Already, groups of silent Panacians were gathering in the doorways to this shattered place, watching me between awed glances at the scorched hole that had replaced the ornate raised ceiling.

“Madame Ket, the Queen will speak to you.”

My grip on the hoobit became an absolute clench. But I nodded graciously at whomever spoke and followed without protest. The Queen of any family here was the final law; a comfortable enough arrangement to one raised by Ersh.

The Queen of Mixs’ family was old enough to keep her successor close at hand where she could learn the family business and understand its management, and young enough to insist her beloved heir sit on the floor, two steps below the ring of drones that never left their Queen’s side. I bowed as I passed through the tingle of the force field that concentrated the Queen’s pheromones for transport to all of her diffuse family, and waited for her to speak. It was a singular honor, if one I could have done without as Mixs’ fate continued to rot in my pouch.

“Madame Ket.” The Queen’s voice was feather-soft yet clear. “You come to us on a night of terror. I remember dear Mixs telling us to trust her courier. Can you explain the events here?”

“Tell me what happened, and I will try, Queen-D’Dsellan,” I said as quietly, my own passions subdued by the calm in this place, a calm reinforced by the absence of corners or edges, by the complex, subtle patterning of the walls.

The Queen raised a claw. One of the four drones attending her spoke from his place at her feet. “There were terrible cries from Her Glory’s workroom, the sounds of furniture being broken. We rushed to Her aid, only to be thrown from our feet by a tremendous explosion. The harvester in the garden saw a projectile, like a streak of light, break through the roof and head into space. The house watchers have found no evidence. They have not found Her Glory either.”

I must control myself.
Fiercely I shot up my temperature to the limit this form could tolerate and remain conscious in an effort to keep form integrity.
Mixs gone?
I had to deal with this part of her family before I could deal with my own loss or its cause.

“This Ket does not know what has happened, Queen-D’Dsellan,” I admitted. “But I feel certain that Her Glory has been murdered.” I paused while the audience and the Queen trilled their distress. “The vessel which brought this Ket to D’Dsel is searching for a creature that—” I stumbled over the word, “—hunts this way. We feared it had reached your world.”

The Queen curled herself into a posture of despair. Almost instantly, all of the other Panacians followed suit, helplessly obedient to the emotional signals she released into the air. I took a step backward, then halted as she raised her head and gazed at me with her glowing eyes. “There will be cooperation with the Commonwealth ship, Madame Ket. We wish this creature eliminated as a threat.” She made a gesture of dismissal. “Mixs’ business with you is not of their concern. I expect your discretion as you may ours.” She straightened, gesturing gracefully with one slender limb. “We shall await the next incarnation of our beloved Mixs.”

How could I explain?
I hesitated, torn between the truth and comfort. Perhaps there was no need. In the way of the D’Dsellans, Mixs’ name could well rise again in the next generation. That it wouldn’t
be
Mixs this time mattered only to me and mine.

I bowed and left.

 

There was only one chance to find out what had happened. Once inside the hoverbot, I disabled its interior sensors, cycling into web-form almost instantly. I consumed both pouch and glass in my haste, but what mattered was the trace of Mixs and what it might tell me.

An instant later, I cycled back to Ket, replaced the hoobit and pulled on my skirt in a breathless contorted struggle that would have been amusing under other circumstances, and reactivated the sensors.

“THERE’S been another disappearance,” Ragem announced, not bothering with politeness. At least he’d pitched his voice for my ears only before dropping into the seat opposite mine in the galley. The engineering shift from last night was busy cleaning up from their supper and preparing to play some game or other. The officers from the day shift were filing in for breakfast and discussing protocols. There seemed a surprising amount of activity for a ship on the ground. “A Sec-ag of the planning caste. Right out of her home.”

I looked up from my plate. “Not an auspicious beginning to the day, Paul-Human.”

Ragem accepted a cup of sombay from Lawrenk Jen as she passed with a trayful, nodding an absent thanks. His gray eyes focused on the fragrant steam curling upward, then lifted to mine. “It happened last night. During the Spring Emergence.” He took a larger than normal swallow and grimaced. “Where were you, Nimal-Ket?”

I fluttered my fingers in a deliberate chuckle. “This Ket sought peace and quiet, Paul-Human, as you know.”

“Where?”

So. I gazed at his face, noting its deliberately mild expression.
Ragem should never play cards with Lawrenk Jen’s crew,
I thought. His eyes always betrayed him. Right now they were quite alarmingly suspicious.

I picked up a piece of toasted bread and enjoyed the sensation of pulling it into bite-sized pieces. The outer surfaces were prickly in delectable counterpoint to the soft interior. Many Human foods were this contradictory.
Shame they had no perceptible taste to this form.
But I’d procured some Ket sauces in the market on my way back to the ship and I tapped one of the small jars with a finger before I dipped the toast into my favorite. It had a standard poison warning on it—Panacians were no more capable of ingesting Ket delicacies than Humans. “This Ket enjoyed the market, Paul-Human. I do not understand your curiosity about the doings of this Ket when such a tragedy has taken place.” I let my vice grow stern.

Ragem picked up one of the jars, his relief as transparent to me as his suspicion. I’d bought them because I knew perfectly well he would check what time I’d arrived at the ship, and would demand an explanation for why it took me so long after leaving the ceremony.
How much simpler to arrange to tell the truth.

Thinking of the truth cost me my appetite. I’d had a difficult night, trying to make myself believe Mixs could be dead when everything I knew said we couldn’t die. Worse was my suspicion, almost certainty, that she had been consumed against her will. I could imagine the terror and pain of that ending all too well.

She should have ended by her choice, some unimaginable millennia from now. She should have become solid, a monument to her life, perhaps a small moon orbiting this world she loved. What I carried in my substance of her memory was all there would ever be now.

“Kearn has been sent the sensor records for the area where the disappearance occurred,” Ragem had continued, oblivious to my distress or attributing it to the topic. “The Panacians are finally taking our investigation seriously. Guess it took the loss of someone of sufficient rank.”

The loss of part of me.
“What do these records show, Paul-Human?” I asked, not hoping for much.

“Whatever it was—and right now there’s no agreement whether the records show a vessel of unknown design, a projectile launched from the room, or even a life-form—it’s left the Hiveworld. The orbital sensors lost it almost immediately, but the Panacian techs are certain it’s also left their system.”

The Enemy was gone. I was safe.
Guilt ran up the heels of that treacherous relief. If the monster was a web-being, a conclusion I no longer doubted, within hours it could have assimilated some or even all of Mixs’ memories. It would know I was on D’Dsel.
I’d tried not to think about that.
The explosion that ripped open the roof—Mixs’ death throes or last effort at defense—must have sent the being into space, inadvertently saving me from being detected immediately. I’d been that close to sharing Mixs’ fate. I couldn’t help moaning and grabbed my hoobit to gain some self-control.