Seeds of Earth (24 page)

'My son,' he said. 'Compose yourself, stem your sorrow.'

The sobbing abated a little.

'Pain . . . Master, in everything I see . . .' The Unburdener gripped Eshlo's arm. 'His eyes, Master!'

Eshlo met her fearful gaze for a moment then put aside his own unease and reached down to drag Cheluvahar out of the
vodrun
chamber. The scholar cried out, shielding his face from the lamplight. But not before Eshlo saw the four new eyes spaced across his forehead, blinking and watering.

'Sister Unburdener,' Eshlo said, barely able to keep his voice from shaking. 'Tear a strip from your robe our brother needs a blindfold.'

23

KAO CHIH

He was dreaming, a disjointed reverie of arguments held in odd, shadowy halls, and inexplicable searches through dusty, half-lit shelves, all the while evading threatening, dog-headed men in a pursuit that led through the storerooms and backstages of a strange and immense theatre. Then he came to a towering, cavernous corridor that sloped down towards a colossal door of fire which was the sole source of light as well as a smothering warmth. A series of wagons and carriages passed by, filled with beings from every species, a noisy, chattering cavalcade that seemed unaware of their journey into fiery doom. He ran alongside them, away from the blazing portal, shouting and trying to warn them, but they took no notice.

The carriages grew larger as the procession moved onwards and downwards, became interstellar vessels, tierliners and freighters, garbage scows and warships, then great cityships and immense orbitals of wheel or cone or helix or cluster configuration. And, impossibly, entire planets and their moons joined the parade, sailing ponderously past, their cloud-strewn surfaces tinged reddish-gold by the furnace that awaited them.

Then suddenly he was on one of the great, opentopped carriages, accelerating down towards the stupendous flaming maw. There was no way to escape he was hemmed in by oblivious sentients as the heat grew intense and the incinerating light flooded his senses, blinding, burning . . .

And he awoke, stretched out on a wooden floor, bound hand and foot, with a bright light shining in his face.

'It's awake,' said a sibilant voice. The words were in a guttural 4Peljan variant, but the linguistic enabler Tumakri had given him made them understandable.

'Good,' said another, deep and hoarse. 'Get it on its feet and move that band up to its knees. It can walk I'm not carrying it.'

With the light trained on his eyes, one of his captors hauled him upright then slid the restraint from ankle- to knee-level. Kao Chih felt groggy and full of aches from erratic sleep and lack of food - he didn't know how long he had been held prisoner but guessed it to be nearly a day. They had locked him in an upper-floor room in poor Avriqui's residence, during which time he had been given nothing but a plastic bowl of brackish water.

Now, as he was led along a low passageway by a rope tethered to his neck, he was able to see his guards more clearly. Both were Henkayan, a brawny, fourarmed race of humanoids taller than Humans by head and shoulders. However, one of these two was if anything slightly shorter than Kao Chih, scrawny and walking with a limp. This was the one with the torch, still held carelessly, and who suddenly became aware of Kao Chih's regard. Without turning the Henkayan paused and buffeted the side of his head with an upper hand.

'Why you looking, Human scum?'

'Leave it alone,' said the other. 'Munaak wants it undamaged.'

'But it stare at me. Curses with eyes, maybe.'

'Everyone stares at you, Grol, trying to understand why you're so ugly.'

Grol shook the torch in anger. 'You shut, Tekik, you shut! You scum-eater ...'

'Shut up your vlasking,' said Tekik, voice louder and threatening, 'or I'll ram that light down your gullet and Munaak will shove a spikel up your waster - if you don't get a move on!'

Kao Chih stared at the floor, his gaze never lifting as he was steered up a narrow stairway consisting of many shallow steps. Earlier, while lying awake in the darkness, he had almost been overwhelmed by the grimness of his situation, lost far from home, his only companion, Tumakri, almost certainly dead, while he himself was in the hand of ruthless brigands. Even if he could somehow escape, all the border documents and the ship ID tag had been in the Roug's pocket, along with the hard cash and the credit spines. But without his or Tumakri's live presence, they were useless to whoever had them, which wasn't much of a consolation. Yet somehow the worst of the bleak dread had ebbed as the hours had dragged by, aided by a small voice of hope insisting that they had to be keeping him alive for a reason.

Up on the next floor he was led straight through a dark open door into a small, wedge-shaped room lit by a long console of screens and displays. Several large, indistinct figures were gathered on either side of a highbacked chair on a swivel pedestal. Kao Chih was alternately dragged and pushed over to the chair then made to kneel, close enough to hear an odd-sounding dialogue. There were two voices deep in conversation, except that one of them seemed to have a whispery echo. Then the chair turned.

A pair of reddened, piercing eyes regarded him from the hollow-cheeked face of a Henkayan who Kao Chih took to be Munaak. Lenscups protected those eyes, magnifying their appearance, while puckered cicatrices criss-crossed the hairless scalp. The Henkayan wore long black robes marked with symbols in pure white, and Kao Chih almost failed to realise that he was missing both right-side arms. But the upper shoulder had something else attached to it - a head.

'This is the Human creature we reluctantly brought under our protection,' Munaak said in a smooth, rich voice, and as he did so the head muttered and whispered, quickly repeating the sentence but mingling its phrases while the shrivelled eyes stayed tightly shut. 'Does it meet your requirements?'

Over Munaak's shoulder, something moved on one of the screens, a shadowy cowled form against a dim background, shelves, racks, yellow light gleaming on glass and chrome objects.

'My ... my requirements call for many, but you have only one.' The hooded figure's voice sounded vaguely metallic and blurred. 'Was this one alone?'

'It was travelling with a Roug but we killed it rather than let some biter vermin gain a commodity . . .'

'A Roug?' The shadowy figure leaned back. 'An old race with strange abilities - might they not pursue, seek redress?'

Munaak made a derisive sound. 'An old race, but weak and without allies - they will not venture this far. Now, you know the price so will you pay?'

The cowl inclined. 'I will enable the fund transfer now and arrange collection of the specimen in three odas.'

The screen blanked and was replaced by swirling blue patterns. Munaak regarded Kao Chih for a moment with his large, gleaming, unwinking eyes then switched his gaze to the two guards.

'Take our specimen down to the vehicle bay,' he said, with the head whispering disjointedly. 'Lock it in the storeroom, and no delays for any reason!'

Kao Chih kept his head bowed and his mouth shut as the Henkayan guards roughly and swiftly dragged him out of the room. He had learned early on the value of silence and now all he could do was hold to both his sanity and a few shreds of hope.

But now my fate rests on my value as merchandise of some kind,
he thought bitterly.
We were foolish to come here so rashly - where there are no laws the weak become property.

Neither of his escorts said anything as they hurried him down a steep stairway in which the gravity plating was decidedly uneven. Soon they arrived at a heavy, moulded pressure door that swung sideways to admit them to a gloomy parking bay with curved walls. A pathway of spongy, grubby gravplates led along one of the walls, between the reinforced struts, to what looked like a rectangular box with a window. The brawny Tekik opened a door in its side, paused to snap another restraint around Kao Chih's ankles, then thrust him inside. He gave the cluttered interior a brief look and stepped back, but before the door closed the scrawny Grol poked his head round.

'Human scum going to new owner,' he sneered. 'Soon wish he was back with good Henkayan friends - we not scientists!'

He let out a burst of cackling that stopped abruptly when a large hand grabbed him by the throat and yanked him back out. The door slammed, a locking click, squabbling voices receding, the pressure door closed with a soft clank and the hiss of the seal. Silence.

Kao Chih squirmed onto his back in the darkness and managed to get into a seated position, leaning against the wall. Feeling drained and shivering a little, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. A faint blue radiance came from a small console set into the grimy window's lower right corner and as his eyes grew accustomed a few details became apparent. Dozens of small objects, parts maybe, were scattered over most of the floor, and the air stank of degraded machine oil. Cupboards gaped, revealing rolls of some mysterious material and heaps of tools, wires, junk. A large metallic cylinder, a lubricant tank perhaps, was fixed to the wall, above a few rows of indistinct tools on hooks...

'Are they gone?' said a voice.

Kao Chih caught his breath in surprise, senses suddenly alert.

'Who's there?' he muttered. 'Where are you?'

'First look out of the window and see if either of those cretins is standing guard.'

Guessing that the hidden speaker might be a survivor from Avriqui's household, Kao Chih struggled to his feet and shuffled over to the window.

'No one there,' he said, peering out. 'Must have gone back in . . .'

'Good - one less obstacle to overcome.'

Pale, bleached light bloomed in the small room and Kao Chih turned to see the wall cylinder flicker like a display with a bad feed. Then, in an instant, it went from a two-metre drum-like fixture with flat ends to a somewhat dumb-bell-shaped object about a metre tall. The meagre light from microfield projectors showed up the scratched and battered casing as it drifted over to the window.

'Nice trick,' Kao Chih said slowly. It was a sentient mech of unusual config, yet there was something familiar .. .

'Camouflage projection,' the mech said. 'It has its uses, now and then.'

Recognition dawned. 'I've seen you before, at that market in the big corridor where ...' He faltered, vividly recalling Tumakri's last moments.

'The Roug who was killed yesterday was your friend?'

'Friend and travelling companion,' Kao Chih said.

'And you are a Human.' The machine paused. 'Your race is most uncommon in these sectors, yet greatly disliked.'

'So it seems,' he said. 'Were you an associate of Rup Avriqui?'

'You speak in the past tense so I assume that the vile Munaak has taken his life, and now he's looking for a buyer for you . . .'

'He's found one, a scientist of some kind.'

'Ah, a vivisector in other words.' The mech's microfields showed a glittery diffraction pattern for a brief moment. 'Now I shall be most honest with you although I knew Avriqui slightly I could not be considered his associate. However, when your Roug friend was ambushed and killed on Nibril Concourse I was nearby and chased off those Gomedran scavengers. Even with a bolt in his head he was still conscious enough to urge me to take certain items from his garment while repeating a name over and over, saying I had to find this person, Gow-Chee. This is you, correct?'

'Indeed, yes,' Kao Chih said, hardly daring to hope.

'You may call me Drazuma-Ha*, although my full name involves audio frequencies your species is unequipped to hear.'

The last syllable of the mech's name sounded like a strange metallic chime, but he made no mention of it and gave a short, formal bow.

'I am very pleased to meet you, Drazuma-Ha*. Now that you have found me, are you prepared to help me escape?'

'I would be more than happy to help you flee this moron-infested junkheap altogether if you take me along with you.'

A number of questions came to the forefront of Kao Chih's thoughts - why did the mech want to leave and where was it heading, among others - but none seemed urgent.

'That would be most acceptable - could you begin by removing these bonds?'

Microfields extended tendril-like from the mech's upper and lower bulbs, there were faint clipping sounds and Kao Chih's ankles, knees and wrists were free.

'My sincerest thanks,' he said, trying to ignore the uncomfortable needling of returning circulation. 'What plan do you have for leaving this place? Will we have to fight our way out?'

'That is one possible route,' said the mech DrazumaHa*. 'However, I did think that leaving by the bay doors in one of Avriqui's lugosivators would be less hazardous to life, limb and circuitry.'

Kao Chih's eyes widened. 'Like the odd cart that Tumakri and I rode in? Are they fit for hard-vacuum travel?'

'Barely,' the mech said. 'Well, we only need to get from here to a general maintenance lock, near the Secondary Docking Lacuna, which it should manage adequately.'

'There is a small problem,' Kao Chih said. 'Rup Avriqui was to provide a hyperspace course dataset for the next stage of our journey, which he was supposed to join us on. It must still be in his system somewhere ... would you be able to access it from here, perhaps?'

The mech was silent for a moment, its aura displaying strings of geometric symbols that pulsed with a soft, pearly glow then vanished.

'These controls,' the mech said, pointing a microfield extensor at the small window console, 'are not linked to the hold's higher data functions. I will
have
to go up into the hold itself and
hope
to find a terminal nearby without encountering any of Munaak's thugs.' The machine glided over to the door, which clicked and swung open. 'Wait here, and please don't make any loud noises.' It left the storeroom, crossed to the pressure door, which opened and closed behind it.

Kao Chih gazed around him, looking for something he could improvise as a weapon, and came up with a long-shafted autoauger and a good, solid panel sledge. That took about five minutes. Fifteen nail-biting minutes later the pressure door opened again and Drazuma-Ha' re-entered the garage hold.