“There is no doubt.”
“Tomorrow, then, Madame Ket.
With
your friend.”
Out There
HIS eyes hadn’t left it. After four hours or so, he found himself blinking constantly, but Joel Largas had no intention of so much as turning his head, not even to see who belonged to the footsteps approaching him now. “Any response?” he whispered, as if that thing out there could hear him, irrationally convinced it would understand if it did.
“One,” the voice belonged to Char’s half-sib, Denny, a young man whose preoccupation with his future as a performance musician had been left behind with his instruments. Joel found himself lost for an instant, remembering Denny’s mother—a fine starship astrogator who’d believed firmly in following one’s own passions even when it meant having a son who didn’t want any of what she could offer. She’d shared her confused pride with him the last time they’d renewed their temp-contract.
Her ship had been lost long before the fatal attack on Garson’s World.
“Captain?”
Joel pulled himself into the present, refocusing on the blue leeched to the lifepod. They hadn’t told
Anna’s Best
’s captain yet. No one knew what to say. “Yes, Denny. Who was it? Are they close enough to help?”
Denny’s voice contained a note of strain; he deliberately didn’t look outside. “It’s a Commonwealth ship—a First Contact vessel called the
Rigus.
Acting Captain Kearn. Char didn’t know the name.”
“First Contact? What the hell are they doing out here?” Joel didn’t expect an answer and didn’t wait for one. “At least they’ll be armed. How soon can they be here?”
“There’s some confusion about that, Captain. This Kearn wants proof we’re refugees. Seems to think our distress call is some kind of trick by the Kraal Confederacy.”
He hadn’t thought he could laugh, but he did.
“What’s so funny?”
“That’s not even the right war,” Joel gasped, then clamped shut his lips over what could easily become hysteria. He’d seen enough of it in others to know no one was immune. “Stay here. Let me know if anything out there changes.”
He looked out the viewport one last time, wondering what they could do if anything did.
44:
Cruiser Night
SKALET hadn’t waited for the
Quartos Ank
to come to where she and her small fleet sat in ambush. Instead, she’d pulled out the
Trium Set
and met us on the way. While I appreciated the speed, I was less appreciative of her reaction to what had happened. Maybe I was being ephemeral, as Ersh would say, but I expected at least some compassion for what I’d been through, some grief for Ansky.
From Skalet?
I should have known better.
“Her attachments led to her ruin,” Skalet repeated. “I want this to be a lesson to you, youngest. There is a difference between successfully living among a species and imagining yourself part of it.”
No danger of that for you,
I thought rebelliously, glancing around Skalet’s quarters, with its war maps and ambush plans.
“Ansky followed the Rules. She tried to protect the Web and other intelligences from harm,” I said without trying to control my temper. “Do you advise me against this?”
Her lovely voice developed a sting in return. “You fool! She did just the opposite. What precipitated the crisis on Artos if not this—this exhibition of a death?! She showed herself to aliens! Ansky broke the First Rule!
Do not reveal the web-form or abilities to those outside the Web.
It seems clear enough, youngest!”
I refused to back down. “Correct me if my memory errs, Skalet, but since no one else has died this way before, how was she to know what would happen?”
Her delicate nostrils flared, once, distorting the tattoos under her skin as though they moved of themselves. “Her concern should have been with the species as a whole, not with individuals. And it should have been with those she observed, the Articans, not this plaything she kept. A distinction you seem to blur as well.” This last had a warning bite to it.
“Fine,” I snapped. “Ansky should have known better than to die before our Enemy could find and eat her.”
This was getting us nowhere.
I waved one hand in surrender. “Believe what you will, Skalet. I’ve no interest in arguing about what can’t be changed. What do we do now?”
She paced away from where I crouched, then returned, her scowl gone but the deeply troubled look on her face warning me we weren’t quite done scolding Esen. “First, we have to do something about your Human,” she announced. “We must be rid of him before he discovers your true nature.”
Ersh was fond of sharing with me the pivotal moments in the history of species, cultural events, or evolutionary changes dictating this path and no other would be taken. I knew from my own recent experiences there were also pivotal moments in the lives of individuals.
I faced one now, as I stared at my instructor, my Elder, the one whose flesh was my flesh.
How well I understood her motives.
As one in the Web, I shared them. As Esen-alit-Quar I could not.
I felt my growing separateness, my individuality, weighing like a noose around my neck. Perhaps I merely pulled on my hoobit too hard. Or perhaps I was closer than I had ever been to understanding what made Ersh so unique among us. Whether I was supposed to think in terms of species rather than persons was irrelevant. I knew what was right. “You will not threaten or harm Paul Ragem,” I stated flatly, as sure of this as I was of the number of molecules in this body. “I want that quite clear between us, Skalet.”
“What is clear is that you have lost your perspective, ’tween. Ersh should have kept you home for another century at least!”
Odd how calm, how controlled I felt.
“You are welcome to share that with her,” I shrugged. “Just make no mistake with me, my sister. Ragem is as close to me as though we were one flesh. I trust him with my life—and I owe him his.”
“Just how much trust have you given this ephemeral, Esen the foolish?” Skalet’s eyes suddenly widened, her face turning a ghastly white under the tattoos. “You’ve told him about us, haven’t you!”
It never paid to underestimate Skalet.
She darted toward the door and I intercepted her, suffering a painful kick in the knee as we collided. “Out of my way!” There was nothing lovely about her voice or face now.
I cycled.
Share!
I sent.
Learn!
I demanded.
Ragem kept his face carefully neutral, but his gray eyes flicked uneasily from Skalet to me and then back again. “That’s the whole story,” he finished, spreading his hands outward. “I’ve been helping Es track down this killer—trying to, anyway. If you won’t accept our friendship as motivation enough, then believe I can’t sit by and watch innocent beings slaughtered in cold blood, not if I can do something to prevent it. Who could?”
Not a particularly good question in present company,
I thought, watching Skalet for her reaction. She’d been very subdued, most unSkaletlike behavior, since assimilating what I’d forced her to share: my feelings for Ragem, his actions to save me and to save Ansky. In exchange, I learned more about the results of waging war in space than I’d wanted to, but neither of us felt inclined to forbearance with the other.
“I tasted the start of all this on Picco’s Moon,” she said at last, looking down at her steepled fingers, long, elegant hands owing nothing to a common evolution with the Human across the table from us both. “Esen, what have you done? Have you any idea what this being Kearn may do? He is obviously someone of influence, who can convince others.”
“Only to a point, S’kal-ru,” Ragem offered, diplomatically keeping to the name matched to the form she wore. “So far he’s had a bit of evidence to wave in front of his superiors. Not much, but sufficient to arouse curiosity. He doesn’t have the reputation to carry on this hunt for Esen—for your kind—any farther if there’s a setback. Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t been recalled already.”
“Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the enemy than any possible threat in the future from Kearn?” I interjected, knowing Skalet only barely accepted Ragem’s presence and his knowledge of us; I deemed it safer not to let her focus her attention on him too long. “He doesn’t have the confidence of his crew or superiors, S’kal-ru. I expect he’s going to lose what credibility he has—”
“Unless he can find something else,” Skalet finished for me.“This being hunting us,” a quick doubtful look to Ragem before she carefully chose another word, “this predator. Is it possible we can maneuver them together? Regardless of the outcome, it could deflect attention from us.”
Ragem didn’t so much as flinch, although I knew he immediately thought of Tomas, and all the others he cared for on the
Rigus.
I’d forewarned him that Skalet was ruthless; still, I hadn’t expected him to handle her so well.
He’d earned those alien culture specialist bars somewhere,
I reminded myself. “Would it not be much better, S’kal-ru,” he suggested mildly, “if Kearn goes away safely from such a meeting, having been convinced that this menace is not the same type of being as yourselves, something he currently believes to be true.”
Skalet glared at me and I rolled my eyes.
Did she think I’d tell Ragem the Enemy was one of us?
If I hadn’t, she certainly wouldn’t.
The Human, however, drew his own interpretation of our sudden silence. “Kearn is wrong,” he half-stated, half-asked, staring at us both. “It
is
something different, isn’t it?”
My “Of course!” and Skalet’s “How could you think—!” overlapped into a confused muttering that obviously didn’t reassure a now somewhat haggard-looking Ragem.
I could see his point.
Here he was, alone in a room with two very alien beings whose existence only he knew about, on a ship crewed by Humans who owed complete loyalty to one of us, supposedly chasing an incredibly deadly and blood-thirsty creature. A creature he suddenly suspected could be one of us.
Character builder, Ersh would call it,
I acknowledged to myself, curious what he would do next.
What Ragem did was leap away from the table, stumbling backward until his shoulders hit the wall with an audible thud. From the look on his face, he was planning to stay there.
“I think I’ll check on the fleet,” Skalet said hastily. The look she gave me as she scurried from the room was frankly triumphant, doubtless because she thought I was about to lose Ragem’s support and have to allow her to kill him.
I really hoped not.
45:
Brig Morning
SKALET knew her Humans, I had to give her that. Ragem did not take my confession that our Enemy was a web-being at all well. At least I’d been able to save his life—for now. But he wasn’t happy with me.
Of course, that could have been the compromise I worked out with Skalet, namely locking Ragem in the brig until he calmed down and saw reason.
Since these were events over which I had no control and which weren’t my fault, I thought it unfair of the Human to blame me. Which was the interpretation I put on his sitting on the bunk, back deliberately to me, when I tried to talk to him the next morning. The guard outside the door had already told me Ragem hadn’t eaten his breakfast. I wasn’t surprised. The
Trium Set
’s brig was a thoroughly tasteless affair, a metal-walled box with a bunk, sleeping pad, and a ’fresher stall in one corner for necessities. A suitable spot to repent sins, I supposed, especially in an aesthetics-driven society, but hardly a reasonable place for my friend and ally.
“It’s an improvement over the dungeon,” I offered, daring to sit on one end of the bunk this time. “No bugs. Better food.”
No response. His shoulders stayed hunched as if to deny I was even there. This was an unfamiliar Ragem to me, one who seemed to have given up—as if his curiosity had finally repaid him with an answer he couldn’t accept.
Maybe that curiosity, rather than reason, was the way to reach him now.
I cycled, folding myself almost tenderly into a slightly-built form, looking at my new hands as I curled each into a ball then opened it again, the effect like that of pale yellow flowers opening to the sun.
I pursed my three lips and began to purr, letting my subvoice slide upward into the melody, counterpointed by the thrumming of my throat. The song swept away time, swept away the brig and the concerns of those in it, swept clear all but its glory.
My body still throbbing with music, I closed my lips over the last note and looked at Ragem.
He’d turned to look at me.
How could he not?
His face wet with tears, his merely Human voice sounded like some machinery grinding when he at last spoke. “That music—it’s only legend. No one has heard it—”
I had just enough mass to return to simply Ket, a form almost like home. “No one has heard it for a thousand years,” I finished for him. “Yes. I know.”
“A Jarsh . . .” he identified, a note of wonder in his voice; then it sharpened into incredulity. “What good is the shape of a dead species to you?”
“Dead? Perhaps. But never forgotten. This is our work,” I said softly.
“Is it?” he challenged:
a definite improvement over ignoring me,
I thought. “Is that why Ansky was on Artos? Is that why Skalet follows the Confederacy? Is that why this thing is ripping apart ships?” His eyes were accusing. “Do you and your kind merely observe cultures in turmoil—or cause it? What do you hope to gain? Just information to help you impersonate other beings? I could understand that,” the Human finished in a strange flat voice, “but after meeting Ansky and Skalet, well, it doesn’t make sense. There’s more going on, isn’t there.”
“Of course there is, Paul-Human,” I admitted freely. “We learn far more than we’d need to simply mimic other forms. That was never the point of what we do. We learn all we can, share it among ourselves. Our goal is to preserve all we can of the accomplishments of intelligent life in case you throw yourselves away, as species after species has done, as the Articans are about to do, as your kind almost succeeding in doing mere centuries ago.”