I surprised a chuckle from him. “Done,” the Human said emphatically. “It’s off my list, too.” He tilted his head, his smile fading, eyes intent on mine, “Do you trust me now, Esen-alit-Quar?”
“That depends on how much of my trust you wish, Ragem,” I came back as bluntly, folding my aching hands over the hoobit. “I warn you. There’s more at stake than your keeping the secret of what I am outside this room.”
He nodded slowly, not surprised.
I hadn’t expected him to be.
“You spoke of limits, once. Respect mine. That’s all I ask. I won’t endanger my crewmates or any innocent lives. I don’t believe you would,” he added quickly, as though sensing my protest before I uttered it. “Beyond that,” he continued, “you can trust me as far as you need to. We’re friends, Es.” This last on a lighter note, as though some joy came with the commitment.
I thought grimly of the Enemy, of the innocent already dead, including Mixs and Lesy. “That’s all you ask? Take care, Ragem. I came very close to killing you tonight. I can’t promise it won’t happen again.”
“You didn’t. And you’ve warned me.”
He made it all seem uncomplicated. We were friends. To this Human, it seemed a binding as soul-deep as any I had with those of my Web. On another day, I might not have perceived the exact moment in which Ragem gained that stature in my life, but today I’d tasted the last thoughts of my web-kin. It left an agonizing emptiness Ragem’s offered friendship somehow helped to fill.
Ersh?
She could have a problem with my adopting Ragem into the Web. I decided it was simplest not to tell her about it.
“Get comfortable, my friend,” I suggested. “I’ve a lot to tell you, starting with poor Martha Smith.”
There wasn’t enough time before the day period began on the
Rigus,
with its growing activity—including Tomas sure to arrive shortly afterward to seek his turn in bed—to share everything I wanted to share with Ragem; as it was, I could tell by his somewhat glazed eyes that he’d enough to think about for a while.
But the quick-witted Human did grasp our current dilemma. “So we have no way of knowing which of your kin this Enemy will go after next.”
“None,” I admitted. “But Lesy’s last thoughts were of Skalet and Ansky.”
And me. And Ersh.
“And you’ve no idea what it looks like.”
Not at the moment,
I comforted myself as I lied: “No. Our Eldest passed on stories about a predator—a solitary, deadly being—that might one day come to hunt us through space. The thing was supposedly mindless, yet implacable and dangerous. I’d believed it was only a legend, the kind of thing you Humans tell your children to make them behave.”
“Legends have their roots in the truth,” Ragem noted.
“So it seems.”
“Can you find it?”
I was tired, too, but the med unit was helping, and it was important to chase down every idea. Ragem’s thought processes were subtly different; his assumptions about my abilities, as now, made me question my own. “If I can see or touch another of my kind, I know them for what they are,” I thought out loud. “This Enemy found Mixs, but I don’t know how. Yet. But when I was out there,” simply thinking of the experience brought an involuntary longing to my voice, “I didn’t sense anything that could be followed.”
Something else to ask Ersh,
I decided. I hadn’t told Ragem about Ersh, for his own protection. Ersh had made the Rules. I sincerely doubted she’d bother to obey them if Ragem became a threat to her privacy.
Ragem stretched, glancing at the chrono on one wall. “Day shift’s about to start,” he observed as he rose to his feet. “Back in a minute.”
While he was in the ’fresher stall, substituting being deluged with water for a night’s sleep, I kept trying to think of some action to take, something we could do. Running home to Ersh’s protection was beginning to assume an unexpected charm. At the same time, I knew I couldn’t risk drawing the Enemy to her.
I was as helpless as the Ket form I inhabited.
Fortunately, Ragem’s thought processes were more productive. I’d noticed this about Humans in showers. He jumped out, looking remarkably refreshed for a being who’d had a night like ours, grabbing clothing as he spoke rapidly. “Kearn will be sending reports out this shipday, Es. I think I can slip a couple of other messages translight within the same courier signal.”
I couldn’t help saying bitterly: “As I tried to send to Lesy.”
Ragem paused midway through pulling on a pant leg. “I know. I’m sorry, Es. But perhaps these will be in time.”
I wanted nothing more than to pull down the lid of the med unit and let it put me to sleep. But Ragem was right. I couldn’t ignore any possibility. “I’ll dictate.”
I stayed in the med unit the next day. Ragem and I had concocted some story about my overexerting myself and needing the relief of some lower gravity therapy. The untruth came back to haunt me; many of the crew left messages of condolence and remorse for having caused me to harm myself.
Tomas snored. He’d offered to sleep elsewhere while I used the med unit, but I demurred, content to rest. Ket hearing wasn’t as keen as Lanivarian; I’d tolerated his snoring in that form without trouble, now finding it only a peaceful, background kind of sound.
Anything peaceful was welcome, short of the med unit deciding to administer more tranks to put me under. I’d been able to keep my Ket body calm enough to forestall that waste of my time.
Where was the Enemy going next?
Every minute we waited here was a minute closer to the loss of someone else.
But who?
It helped that Ragem was doing something when I couldn’t. I’d given him the latest code words and locations to reach both Skalet and Ansky, as well as a warning message blunt enough to get a response from a stone:
Mixs and Lesy murdered. You may be next.
Skalet might have already left for Kraos to finish my task. No chance to reach her there, but Kraos was, I thought, safely distant. What I knew of its craving suggested my Enemy would seek the nearest source of web-flesh. I shuddered. It was the ultimate perversion, to take flesh without offering yours in return. If I allowed myself to dwell on that fate, both my hearts hammered until the med unit threatened to put me out.
I’d almost identified the Enemy in the message to Ansky and Skalet, but stopped myself in time. Putting such dangerous information in a concrete form risked some ephemeral less open-minded than my friend Ragem starting to ask the wrong questions.
Ersh would not be amused. At all.
I’d felt a twinge of guilt at not telling Ragem the truth, that our Enemy was web-being. But it was, I found, an easy guilt to bear, much easier than imagining his likely response.
Bad enough Kearn believed I was such a monster than seeing the same realization on Ragem’s face.
Where would my Enemy go? What was it capable of?
Tomas stopped snoring for a moment, then resumed with a startling moan. I could have echoed it. Lesy-memory surfaced, “Mixs, not Mixs . . .”
What did it mean?
Had she been fooled, just for a moment, by some imposture by the Enemy?
It couldn’t have been in person. We couldn’t disguise ourselves as any other individual.
How else?
I caught my breath. Was it possible the Enemy had assimilated enough from Mixs to know the contact codes, to be able to send its own messages, messages that could trick one of us into a trap?
And would it try the same trick on Ansky or Skalet?
I could only hope Ragem’s carefully hidden signals would reach them first.
But how could it send a message at all?
If Ersh could contact us without using technology, surely she would do so. For a semi-immortal being, she was incredibly impatient with communication delays.
I felt as though I should be hiding in the med unit, not healing.
Was this alien web-being capable of more than Ersh?
This last thought was too much for my Ket physiology. The room and my problems became less distinct as the med unit quite firmly took control of my distress and chose to end it. For now.
Out There
JOEL Largas dimmed the lights in the children’s cabin, automatically counting each of the five tousled heads as he would bags of freight. He was brusque with them when they were awake—not used to encountering toddlers and toys in translight and at any given moment certain the whole scheme would spiral to disaster at the curious push of a tiny finger on some panel never remotely made childproof.
He closed the door, flattening one space-dark palm against it. There’d been no problems; he devotedly hoped that between himself and the rest of them, Char and the older sibs, they’d keep the ship and its contents safe till planetfall. You couldn’t keep young ones cooped up—not when they’d grown up used to a sky overhead instead of strip lighting.
For a moment, grief welled up, grief for the amber-hued sky none of them would see again. The Largas’ family was luckier than most, he knew. Unlike some other ships in the convoy, his boasted experienced crew and well-maintained equipment. When the attack came, anything space-capable had been filled with life and tossed upward. His cousin Lyra’s ship hadn’t lasted through the atmosphere, tanks bursting along hastily repaired seams, those crammed inside her hull sharing the fate of the rest of their world.
He expected at any moment to hear that they’d lost another ship in the convoy, its engines failing even as they fled to safety at the fastest pace the slowest could manage. Another delay and another risky passage between ships, transferring those who’d never imagined being in space before. It was enough to scar the soul. Thank goodness for the laughter of children and their toys underfoot.
Alone in the corridor, Largas allowed himself to press his forehead against the bulkhead protecting those he’d saved, and wept for those he couldn’t.
Never knowing how Death slowed,
hungry,
considering the tiny chain of ships.
Choosing
its next prey.
32:
Starship Afternoon
“I DON’T care much for our options, Nimal-Ket.” Ragem and I were alone, but we’d agreed it was wiser for him to treat me and, even better, think of me as Ket.
For this reason, the Human lay facedown as I stood over him, digging the fingers of my better hand into the by now loose muscles of his shoulder. “They are as they are, Paul-Human,” I said with a remarkable amount of contentment, considering the subject of our conversation. “We can’t change where my kin have chosen to live. Skalet studies strategy within the Kraal Confederacy. It is her specialty.”
“Strategy? Kraal V’s currently pounding the life out of Kraal VII, with the timely assistance of armaments supplied by Kraal Prime and some Denebian smugglers the Commonwealth would love to catch. Oh, a lovely system to drop in and visit.”
I fluttered my fingers against his skin, a Ket grin. “Ansky’s home is much more—peaceful, Paul-Human.”
Ragem shuddered. “Artos? It’s been recommended for the banned list for good reason, my friend. The Articans are xenophobic fanatics who’d rather sacrifice an innocent visitor to their God of Bones than feed their own offspring. Have you ever seen the list of taboos they send to any approaching ship? They change them faster than you can print out a copy.”
“We each have our own beliefs, Paul-Human. Are you a religious being?” I asked. He didn’t answer, so I went on: “Ansky has seen something that calls to her sense of belonging among these beings.”
“I’d like to ask her what that could be,” he muttered darkly.
Ask her?
The instantaneous darkness of my answering thought kept me silent.
Who did this Human think he was talking about?
I pressed the heel of my healthy palm with unnecessary force into his back.
Entirely bad enough he knew of me.
I hadn’t planned to introduce him to the family.
Ever!
Ragem is my friend,
came another, better thought. Before he could complain about the sudden vigor of the massage, I softened my touch, then reached for a cream I knew Humans enjoyed. “You’ve had no response to the warning messages,” I continued with what I felt was commendable patience. “We may be forced to simply pick one—”
“And convince Kearn to go there,” Ragem sighed. “Easier to face your monster, Nimal-Ket. I can tell you right now, he’s not going to—”
Three things happened simultaneously. A warning klaxon wailed through the ship, I dropped the container on Ragem’s head as he lunged up in response—fragrant white cream coating his hair and ears—and the door whooshed open. “Paul!” shouted Tomas, hurtling through it, his voice barely audible over the alarm. “Kearn wants everyone at their stations.”
I climbed quickly up on a bunk, tucking my feet out of the way of both Humans as they sought bits and pieces of uniform from the drawers beneath. I was puzzled at first, then recognized what they were donning as the coveralls worn under space suits, complete with the fittings that bonded to the life-support gear. If I had been true Ket, this might have alarmed me, but I now found the threat of vacuum of much less concern.
The klaxon stopped as abruptly as it had begun, its dying echo ringing in my skull. While it was entertaining watching the Humans sort arms into sleeves in the limited space, I no longer enjoyed being an observer, especially to potentially dangerous events. “What’s going on, Tomas-Human?” I asked, feeling the ship come alive in a deeper vibration through the wall. I’d thought we were staying attached to the ruined station for another shipday.
Ragem, ready first despite having to wipe his hair, paused for Tomas’ answer. The redhead’s face was pale, freckles prominent. “There’s a refugee convoy under attack,” he answered. “We’re the nearest Commonwealth ship.”
Ragem’s gray eyes darted to me. “Refugees from where?” he demanded. “Who’s attacking them?”