Shadowkill sq 3, p.33
Shadowkill sq-3, page 33
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
IMAGE: Raska males, conical mounds of flesh, can move some, slowly, sloooowly, prefer stillness, contemplation. Makers of songs and joy. Receivers of life, taking, fertilizing, incubating the eggs of the Raska females.
IMAGE: Mating rite, wonder, power, pleasure. Raska females dancing in the light of seven moons, rubbing themselves against the male, mindflow as music. (Shadith heard it as a grand symphony played by an orchestra of hundreds).
IMAGE: Time has passed. The Raska females return to the male, deposit eggs in the prepared cavities of his spongy flesh. Explosion of tenderness. Love. Joy. And then, Omphalos came.
Tsipor wept, not tears, but with her hands and her pain.
IMAGE: The eggs cut from the male. He keens his agony and his loss. The females tied to him come racing to him. Are captured or killed. Tsipor is one captured. The male dies. He cries out his grief, his pain, and dies. She feels him die. Her sister/mates die. She feels them die. Omphalos keeps her alive. Alive and alone.
Tsipor cut off the story at that place. What happened after that did not matter; she would not speak of it. “Why?” she said finally, her hands and body repeating her confusion, her anguish. “Why make such pain?”
“Don’t ask me,” Shadith said. “I didn’t understand Ginny, I don’t understand Omphalos. Tell you true, I don’t want to. I’d be afraid it’d rub off on me.”
15
They rose before dawn, rode and walked, walked and rode to the next water on the map, slept through the worst of the heat, rode and walked, walked and rode for several hours after sundown.
Day faded into day.
They saw no one, no traveling chals, no wandering Brushies or tumaks, no trucks on the road or skimmers overhead.
After the second night they didn’t say much to each other; there was no need.
16
On the fifteenth day, shortly after dawn, four silver spheres flared into sudden visibility, before, behind and on each side of them. Tsipor and Shadith shot at the same time, each hit their mark, but the pellets rebounded from the spheres without damaging them.
“I permitted that as an exercise in futility.”
“I know that voice,” Shadith said. “Ginny?”
“Singer.”
“What do you want?”
“Not your death.”
“That’s obvious. You don’t waste words on targets.”
“Yes. I will be joining you in one moment. I prefer not to have to wait for you to recover from a stunning, so stay where you are.”
“All right.”
##
A small flit dropped to the ground ahead of them, opened up its side. Ginbiryol Seyirshi stepped onto the ramp, beckoned to them.
Shadith kicked her heels into her pony’s sides, dropped the lead rope, and rode forward.
Tsipor pa Prool stayed back, watching, rifle held loosely under her arm.
Ginny held up a hand. “Truce,” he called out. “Do you agree?”
Shadith stopped the pony five meters off, sat frowning at him. “Last time you didn’t bother asking, just grabbed. Why all this?”
“I need your active cooperation.”
“Why should I have anything to do with you?”
“Omphalos.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend? I never much believed that.”
“Does it matter? No matter what you think of me, you do have friends and Omphalos has them. Not for long. Experimental material has a short life line in their hands.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Read me.”
“Tell me.”
“Destruction breeds round you, Singer. I need you.”
“I don’t trust you. I can’t.”
“Your own words, Singer. Last time I didn’t bother asking, just grabbed. We both remember how wrong that went.”
“True. How did you get away? You were a prisoner, weren’t you?”
“They meant to use me to take a world for them, so they sent me out on a ship with a workshop built to my specifications.”
“Fools.”
“Yes. As big a fool as I was, trying to contain you.”
“Truce till when?”
“One year, during which time neither attempts to kill the other.”
“Good enough. One last thing. My companion. She has reason to loathe Omphalos. She comes.”
“Necessary?”
“Yes.”
“Agreed, provided she swears truce also.”
Shadith twisted around, waved Tsipor to them.
The Raska came slowly, her dark red eyes fixed on Seyirshi.
“He offers truce,” Shadith said. “While we go after Omphalos.”
“Is true ssaying?”
“At the moment.”
Tsipor flipped the rifle around, handed it to Shadith. She slid from the saddle with a boneless ease and walked up the ramp. She stopped in front of Seyirshi, reached toward him.
“Let her touch you, Ginny. There’s no harm in it. Tsipor, the right arm, not the left.”
Tsipor pa Prool dropped her hand lightly on Seyirshi’s true arm, jerked it away, hissing as she did so. She stepped back, turned to face Shadith. “Bad,” she said. “To trust, now iss yess.”
“All right,” Shadith said. “We’re in.”
Dyslaera 11: Rohant Edges Toward Escape
1
Rohant lay on his back, his hands resting one below the other under his ribs. It was dark in the cell, as dark as it ever got, the lights in the corridor outside dimmed to a grayish twilight.
##
As he had night after night for weeks now, Miji the sakali trotted along an unlit corridor, frill erect, senses alert for insomniac wanderers. It was about an hour before dawn on a night as uneventful as last night and the night before and the night before that, and so on, but he was never at ease inside the prison wing.
##
For weeks now Rohant had been using the sakali like a blind man’s cane, probing the corridors around his cell and throughout the prison wing.
It was a frustrating process. He could not see through Miji’s eyes, or hear what he heard, he could only read the sakali’s reactions, feel the play of his muscles. Despite this he was acquiring considerable information about his surroundings. Dyslaera had unusually accurate perceptions of distance, direction, and duration. Each pitpat of Miji’s tiny feet told him more about the maze around him.
The Omphalites took him out of his cell nearly every day, sometimes twice. Every five days they took him to the exercise court so he could wash, get some sun and work the kinks out of his body, running round and round inside those slippery walls. The other times he went to the saferoom where the techs made lifeflakes of him. In the first one they made him shave off half his mustache, then read out a message to Miralys. The degree to which his half-mustache grew back was a timing device for subsequent flakes, evidence that an extended period was being recorded.
And they took him to dine with the Grand Chom, who discarded his mask and robes for these encounters.
The serviteurs were androids, not flesh to be shocked by the Chom’s departure from the rules of behavior before outsiders. There were no guards inside the room, but he wasn’t being foolish; there was a stunfence down the center of the table, ceiling to floor, between Omphalite and Dyslaeror.
“Come here,” he said, the first night they dined. Warily Rohant came toward him. He touched the screen and went down.
He was out for twenty minutes.
When he woke, he found that the serviteurs had lifted him away from the screen, settled him in his chair, crossed his arms on the table, laid his head on them.
“A lesson,” the Grand Chom said. “It’s a stunfield. It won’t kill you, you’re much too valuable to waste.”
The third night they dined, the Chom showed Rohant the flake they’d made for Miralys. Rohant shaving half his moustache, then reading the statement. Then six successive views with related physical data, then the final message detailing how the payment was to be made. “We have you,” he said. “If your Toerfeles wants you back she has to sell us a piece of Voallts Korlach, she won’t be able to raise the ransom elsewhere, we’ve seen to that. And once we have the piece, we have the whole.” He held his hands up, closed them into fists. “Before the year’s out, your Toerfeles will be working for us,”
Rohant said nothing. Let the Chom think he was chagrined by this development. He wasn’t. It wasn’t going to happen. He’d learn his mistake when Miralys was standing in front of him tearing his throat out.
They kept flaking Rohant every two or three days after the first demand was sent out. They’ve done this before, he thought, they’re almost as slick as they think they are.
He hadn’t been called to dinner for over two months. The Chom was away somewhere, or so the gossip went. He didn’t know if he missed it or not. The food was better than he got in his cell, but the company took his appetite away.
##
Miji pattered through the corridors, growing more restless as the minutes passed; dawn was approaching and he needed to be out of this place and in his burrow before the sun was up.
Rohant brought him back through the maze of corridors, took him out to the exercise court; he gave the sakali a mindrub, felt him wriggle with pleasure, then let him go.
Miji dived into the murky water of the sump, swam vigorously through the outflow pipe and went scurrying off, hurrying to get home before the sun brought the tjejunga birds out hunting for stray sakalis and other small-lives.
##
He was ready to go.
He had his escape route planned. Into the Novice living quarters, out into the Novice garden, through the Pleasure House to the Postern Gate that stood open night and day (far as he could tell), propped open by something cold and heavy that Miji didn’t like touching. Once he was outside the Compound, he’d head for the nearest cover and keep running, hoping he could stay clear long enough to get outside the range of their seekers. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than sitting around on his tailbone waiting to be skinned for the amusement of these stupid sheep.
There were three conditions that had to be met before he could make his try.
He had to be out of his cell; only the kephalos could open that grill for him.
He had to have a means of overcoming his flesh guards, always two of them, one going before him, the other following.
He had to have a way of distracting the android guard, one android always, always the same one.
Leaving the cell was no problem. For one reason or another he was out nearly every day.
The guards weren’t a problem either. Thanks to Miji.
##
Miji pattered along an offshoot of the main corridor. There were cells on both sides. In a cubicle in the middle of that cellrank, a man.
Miji’s startle response alerted Rohant to the presence of the man; the speed with which curiosity replaced wariness suggested he posed no threat.
Miji pattered into the cubicle and began nosing at the man, poking and tugging at him with his agile, six-fingered hands, gaining confidence every moment as the man showed no response.
In his cell Rohant was sweating with the effort to stay calm. He could feel what Miji’s fingers felt, he got the textures of the cloth and the skin, the prickle of the fine hairs, the looseness of the muscle under the skin. He knew when Miji had worked his way up the man’s body to his arm.
There was something under the sleeve. A sheath. Leather, probably-because Miji nibbled at it. A metal rod in the sheath. Short, about the length of Rohant’s thumb, but thinner. It could be a stunrod. Rohant squeezed down his surge of excitement; it was disturbing Miji who backed off and was about to scuttle away.
Sweating, his face twisted with concentration, he coaxed the sakali back to the arm, got him to pop the snaps, take the rod from the sheath, and bring it away.
Again and again he had to convince Miji to bring him the rod; he caressed and cajoled the little sakali, kept him trotting along on his hind legs, the rod clutched to his chest.
##
After what seemed an eternity, Miji was crouching outside the grill, his bright black eyes sparkling with satisfaction.
Rohant knelt by the grill, reached between the bars and brought him into the cell, palming the rod at the same time, getting it into the front of his prison shirt. He sat with the sakali on his knee, scratching gently about the frill with the tip of his foreclaw. Miji closed his eyes and went limp, his tongue hanging out; he trilled with pleasure, a tiny bubbling whistle that was pure joy.
##
Later, when Miji was out and sleeping in his burrow, Rohant manage a brief look at his prize. It was indeed a stunrod-small, short range, but all he needed to take out the flesh guards. He opened a half-inch of the hem of his shirt, slid the rod into the opening, and went to work on figuring a way of distracting or disabling the android.
##
“I went,” she told Rohant when he came back. “I didn’t know what to expect. What I saw was odder than I expected, still… I don’t know.
“Digby was sitting in a pulochair inside an image bubble; he was a square brown man with black eyes, wide cheekbones, and a smile that could light up all of Spotch-Helspar. I liked him the minute I saw him. He had a good smell, well, you know what I mean. It was the same thing with that odd creature Frittagga Addams. Anyway, I let him take the language extract, then we talked. And he told me he already knew what part of the problem was. The Watchman program.
“‘You’re running it on full cycle, aren’t you.’
“‘Yes, that’s the way I was told to do it when I bought the androids.’
“‘Everyone is. The jacals love it that way.’
“‘What?’
“‘I suspect that’s what you’ve got raiding your stocks. Someone hired a jacal, probably to get the jinnkitt, I hear you’ve refused three separate offers for it.’
“‘Yes. We won’t deal with brokers and we won’t sell where we don’t trust.’
“‘Right. You know the reason why Watchman androids are sold in threes?’
MEMORY:
It was early days for Voallts Korlach. They’d just opened the compound in Spotch-Helspar, Miralys was pregnant with Lissorn and they had a single Capture ship out bringing in stock for their cages. Rohant was their sole Capture Chief and his cousin Napos ran the ship. In addition to the Dyslaerors they had four Grydeggin trackers in their capture team, a University-trained Katsitoi triad acting as a communal xenobiologist and two Trumpet Viner Cousins as ecologists, setting the pattern for mixed crews that Voallts Korlach continued till the present day.
A series of thefts had been giving Miralys fits. Despite sentries and a triad of watchman androids, someone had been getting to the stock, carrying off small but valuable birds, beasts, reptiles. The thief had twice got close to their most valuable beast, a pure white Mersallan jinnkitt with a base worth of fifty thousand Helvetian gelders, its actual price probably double that. Miralys had already turned down two bidders, because she didn’t like the way they smelled. A third had used a broker; she sent the broker away without bothering to listen to his offer. It was something she and Rohant had agreed on from the beginning. They would not sell so much as a feather through brokers, the buyers had to represent themselves. They wanted to know where their stock was going and what was going to happen to it.
“I was wondering what to do next,” she told Rohant when he got back, “when Zimaryn brought in this card, it made me laugh, there was this mini-holoa up in the left corner, a shovel dancing. Silly thing. Of course I’d heard of Digby and Excavations Ltd. Is there anyone on Spotchals who hasn’t? I wasn’t sure what to think of him and his business and most of all his prices.
“The… well… the exceedingly ambiguous being who sent the card in, I’ll say she for convenience’s sake, was a blonde beauty, I’m not that good at judging the attractions of outsiders, but it seemed to me she was rather past her prime. She sat in the pulochair, crossed her legs and smiled at me, and said her name was Frittagga Addams.
“I tapped my claw on the card and gave her the hoteye.
“‘Why?’ I said.
“‘Five thefts in the past three months. Police nowhere, though they’re trying. Here on Spotchals the P-T-B like to encourage young, healthy, expanding enterprises.’
“‘Young. So right,’ I said. ‘We can’t possibly afford Digby’s fees, even if they’re only half what they’re rumored to be.’
“‘Digby is willing to take his fee in services rather than gelders.’
“‘Specify.’
“‘Digby is a man with a voracious hunger for knowledge. Dyslaera are very little known outside of Dysstrael. He wishes to learn the language and history of your people. Nothing sacred or private, just whatever is public knowledge, what you teach your children. If you will provide a language extract and would agree to come and talk with him once a week for the next year, he’ll consider that sufficient fee for his services.’
“‘Which are?’
“‘He will discover the thief, the means by which the thefts are accomplished and, if possible, recover the stolen stock. He can’t guarantee this last, because he doesn’t know the purpose of the thefts.’
“‘I understand,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to consult the Family first.’
“‘Do that, then come and speak with him. You’ll see.’
