The
Castel
didn’t have the capability for interstellar point-to-point communications—needle comm required power she couldn’t spare, and the registration fee for a permanent comm address designation was steep. Asrial had to rely on the slower, less secure, but far more affordable bounce relays. Eskarion relays beamed data packets daily to inbound courier ships, which then passed the packets on to other couriers, until they got to their intended recipients.
Still, because she knew how easily messages in the bounce stream could be tapped and decrypted, she’d chosen to hold off sending a message to Amin until Eskarion 14. Her message would go out on the next courier, reaching Lyrel 9 at least a dec before she would.
She headed for the booth of a comm company she trusted, her senses on high as they threaded the crowd on the bridge to the commercial district, one ear to the babble of the avatars on the screens. The too-perfect-to-be-real heads blathered on, speculating about an alliance between iBor and NexulMed. Reports blasted on station channels were news of sectoral interest; smaller planetary clips didn’t get much vid time. One word snagged her complete attention: Dareh. Something about contract negotiations falling through—or being postponed, she wasn’t quite sure which—due to massive protests and civil unrest in some Lomidar colonies.
Asrial smiled to herself, taking malicious pleasure at the news. It seemed the power they schemed to grab was causing some problems. A few steps later, she realized she’d lost her companion while listening to the report. She turned back and found Romir still on the bridge.
He gripped the side rail tightly with both hands, as if afraid of losing his balance or that he’d step off the platform. He leaned forward, his weight on the low barrier, his gaze fixed on the bloom of fantastic color beyond the station’s three-level glassteel windows. The view was framed by the black grid supporting the enormous windows, an older, almost obsolete technology dating back to the original construction of Eskarion 14 that didn’t detract from its beauty.
The luminous gas cloud turned near space into swirls of milky rainbow with a star at its heart. It was such sights that kept her in space. How ironic that this time she’d walked past the viewing platform without stopping.
She rejoined him and drank in the sense of power beyond the grasp of puny politicians and corporations. Only silence seemed appropriate at this point.
“What is that?” Romir continued to stare in wonder, his pleasure there for all to see.
“That’s the Dagaerin Field. It’s the original reason iBor built the Eskarion Ring.”
“To look at it?”
Asrial laughed, waving a hand in negation. The thought of a corporation spending creds for tourists to ogle something was too ridiculous for words, no matter how beautiful she found the Dagaerin Field. “Hardly. The rock field around the star is a rich source of dazjanite, which is used to power the Rings.” There were no habitable planets within two jumps of Eskarion; however, mining dazjanite was profitable enough to justify the cost—for a corporation. Other sources had since been developed, reducing iBor’s margin, but the transit fees had more than offset the difference.
Long moments passed while he remained lost in appreciation. Asrial got the impression he’d stand there for days if she let him.
“Let’s go. It’ll still be here on our return.”
Though Romir followed obediently, he kept glancing back. Of course, it was his first time to witness such a phenomenon.
That the sight of the gas cloud could elicit such open wonder in him, breaking the guard he kept on his emotions, gave her hope. Perhaps the similarities she’d noted between his behavior and a pleasure bod’s were off base. His reticence might just be innate, nothing for her to be concerned about.
She continued to the comm company in a better mood.
Romir trailed Asrial
through the station, content to leave her to her thoughts. There was much to see all around them. He had thought they arrived at a busy time—much like a market day—but the station was just as crowded when they left the communications kiosk.
He followed her into another kiosk, this one emanating savory aromas, where a thin woman with glittering purple hair that swayed around her head—and covered most of her face—served dish after dish with barely a pause, her high voice calling out numbers with singsong regularity. A Cyrian, Asrial said simply, as if that explained why the hair moved in opposition to the rest of the woman’s body or the granules of her hair that caused the glitter.
The Cyrian was just one of more than a handful of unusual races mingling in the kiosk. People with horns, with large eyes and slit pupils, with fur, balancing on strangely shaped limbs, all ate with steady purpose. Romir marveled at the variety that greeted him at every turn. Truly the universe held more than he had ever imagined. The existence of something in the abyss between worlds like that fantasy of brilliance he had witnessed on the path, much less one that was wedded to an intricate tangle of power, staggered his mind.
Asrial approached a vacant board and considered the images on display. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat something?” The furrow between her brows hinted at unease.
“I have no need.”
“Veg noodles, then.” She touched the board, then moved to the counter. Her order came quickly, served by the Cyrian, and she took it to an empty table. As she ate, she watched him, questions darkening her brown eyes to the shade of askeiwood.
“Ask.”
“Am I that transparent?” Her gaze drifted to one of the glasses on the wall, her attention momentarily caught by whatever the people in it were saying. He listened but came away just as ignorant; what he could understand of their speech still made no sense to him—speaking as they did of people or places he knew nothing of.
“Is this so very different from your world, your time?”
“Very, so much that I fear I am dreaming.”
Curiosity sparkled in her eyes. “How?”
“No war, the variety of forms in people, voyaging in the abyss between worlds—there are too many differences to count.” He spread his hands.
Her eyes rounded at his answer, but then she smiled self-deprecatingly. “I suppose that was a silly question. Majians were grounders, after all.”
“Surely there are as many differences between grounders as there are races.”
“Probably. I wouldn’t really know.” Asrial waved a hand, casually dismissing the matter. “One thing I’ve always wondered about: the spires in Maj are so high and they have only stairs; did people just climb all those steps the whole time?”
The innocence her question revealed made Romir shake his head in disbelief. She had such a generous soul that the answer that was obvious to him did not occur to her. “The highest spires are usually vyzier’s towers. Among the Mughelis, those of privilege have djinn—”
“Had,” she corrected him with a frown, pausing with her fork upraised. “The Mughelis are all gone now.”
He nodded, acknowledging the reminder, an echo of the shock he had felt rippling through him anew. “So they are. I still find it difficult to conceive.” The enemy of his people had been unstoppable, their forces relentless. The Mughelis respected only ruthlessness, using all means to achieve their goals—even defying nature to create djinn. “But back then, vyziers did not stint in their use of power. They thought nothing of commanding djinn to waft them where they wished to go, including up and down spires. The stairs were for menials and slaves.”
Asrial did not linger at her meal, eating as steadily as the others around her, the food seeming to give her no pleasure. She treated it as a necessity, fuel for the body, nothing more. Had she always done so?
He himself had no use for food, but he remembered enjoying the flavors. Meals were some of the few memories he permitted himself to retain, lacking as they did any association to . . . the people he cared for.
As soon as they left the kiosk, they were accosted.
A group broke out of the flow of people, another example of variety in the universe. These had scales on every part of their bodies left bare—their arms, their chests, even their heads. Scales of blues on black covered most of them, no two patterns alike, though only one had scales of reds and yellows on white. Stones at the bases of their throats flared with the rhythm of life. Bright to his weaver’s sight, all seven looked male yet female—too slender to be men, yet their forms could not be said to be women’s. The scales on their faces were so fine they appeared to have tiny gems outlining their eyes and mouth, the patterns like tattoos.
The black eyes of the seven were fixed on Romir as they approached purposefully. The stares, lidless and devoid of white, made his back prickle. If his heart beat, it might have skipped at the pressure of those unswerving eyes.
One stepped forward, bending a look of inquiry to Asrial. “We wish to know. What is he?”
Romir needed a few moments to understand what had been said. The being sounded as though—he? she? it?—were gargling rocks and phrased the question in a halting pidgin.
Asrial shot Romir a startled glance. “I don’t understand.”
They answered her in a cascade of voices as they spread to surround the two of them.
“He shines.”
“So bright.”
“The consciousness is here.”
“But his body is not.”
As one, their heads tilted, their black eyes devoid of any white looking past the kiosks . . . toward the docking bays where Asrial and he had left the
Castel
.
“We wish to know.” They reached for him all in unison, as though one mind ruled all seven bodies.
Romir flinched. Without thinking, he wove the air before him into a barrier, not wanting to be touched.
“Keep your hands to yourselves. He’s not a pleasure bod for you to fondle.” Face hard, Asrial flung up an arm, interposing herself between him and the inquisitive strangers. Shielding him with her body.
Shocked that she would protect a djinn, Romir grabbed her shoulder, intending to pull her aside.
“Ah!”
He could not tell which throat made the exclamation—they all stared at his hand, mouths agape.
“Apologies.” They pulled their hands away with that eerie synchronism, then stepped back until they stood together arrayed like a matched set.
Asrial lowered her arm, but otherwise did not relax her guard, her shoulders tense where they pressed against Romir.
The one nearest her bowed. Performed alone, the stilted motion looked even more awkward, as if resisting some compulsion to remain vertical like his companions. “Apologies,” he repeated. “Never have we seen a Lomidari so . . . gifted. We would trade for knowledge.”
“Gifted,” Asrial repeated in a dubious tone, ignoring the offer to trade.
The others jostled closer. “What purpose?”
“To walk separate?”
Irritation pleated her brow. “What d’you mean by that?”
One of them jerkily raised an arm to point away. “His body is there, not here.”
Romir stiffened. How could they know he was not as he appeared, that this form was not truly his own?
Asrial darted a glance over her shoulder to him, a question in her eyes. He shook his head, not understanding what she wanted. Raising her chin, she straightened to her full height, regarding them sternly. “Our purpose is no concern of yours.” And still she continued to shield him with her body.
The stones on their throats flashed and flickered in turn and at once, the only divergence in their appearance. It was as if they conversed; Romir had noticed something similar with the lights on the
Castel
’s panel when Asrial sat at the controls. “No trade?”
She said nothing, her silence speaking for her.
They bowed, murmuring “Forgive the intrusion.” Again their motion, their voices were as one. They merged back into the flow of people, disappearing as though they had never been.
Asrial marched off in the opposite direction, the crowd parting before her like a flock of prastu fleeing a hungry yfreet.
“That was strange.”
“Tehld.” Snatching a glance over her shoulder, she pressed a hand to her chest. “That was a hive. They’re telepaths.”
“Telepaths?”
“Among themselves they communicate by thought.”
He understood now why they had behaved as they had, acting in concert, speaking as though of one will. “They trade for knowledge?”
She shrugged. “They pay creds for information. What they do with it, no one knows.”
“What kind of information?”
“I don’t really know. I’ve never had much to do with the Tehld. They don’t sell information, and I’m usually on the buying side, myself.”
Romir eyed the tense line of her back. So had she held herself while shielding him, protecting him without a thought to her own safety. He kept the rest of his questions to himself. The day had given him much to think upon.
The Tehld had known he was not what he seemed. But gifted? He was tempted to laugh at their misapprehension. As though it were his choice to be djinn.
But what had they meant when they said his body was
there
? He had lost his body when he was made djinn.
Ten
After the strangeness
of their encounter with the Tehld, buying supplies was a welcome breath of normalcy. Asrial’s heart finally settled on a moderate beat, though her knees still threatened to knock together.
The meal kits didn’t take long. Unless she splurged, the choices were limited. The only decisions necessary were how many of each to get and when to schedule delivery to the
Castel
.
That left her more time for the more important purchases. She headed down two levels, away from the food and recreation kiosks, into the arms assigned to the industrial section. While none of the stations in the Eskarion constellation hosted a shipyard, there was a brisk trade in micro parts, particularly in the Rim-side stations. She could never have enough spares. Maintenance on the
Castel
’s electronics was a never-ending chore, especially with its ancient control runs.