Mantivore Prey

by S. J. Higbee

  Vrox yips – startled and cold. Scrambles out of Cub’s head…

  But when I turned back to the holomat to tell him our idea had worked, Seth was gone.

  *

  Osmar always used to say, “Trouble likes to boot you in the shins, before breaking your nose.”

  I’d smile and nod, as if I understood what he was tapping about. But it’s a phrase that has scrolled through my brain more than once during the past couple of years, given I now know exactly what he meant. Because just as I stumbled from the Meeting House, heartsick and worried about Seth, Damita commed me. “Your Ladyship? Reckon you need to get over here sooner rather than later. That Gloriosan Detective is fixing to MindTrawl Felina while you’re napping.”

  And why would he make a point of wanting to MindTrawl Felina without me there? Cos he’s likely to blur the lines between a MindTrawl and MindReam, I reckon… Sliding my sunscreen back in place, I shouted to Helston that we needed to hurry, gathered up my robes and broke into a run. Something I hadn’t done nearly often enough in Gloriosa, judging by how quickly I started panting like some broken-winded oldster. By the time I stumbled through the door to the Security Suite, I was almost beyond words, sweat-slicked and caked in dust.

  “Why, what a pleasant surprise, Your Ladyship,” said Damita, her expression deadpan as she stood, bobbing her head in an approximation of a bow.

  Everyone else stopped and bowed, while I continued wheezing. Damita supplied one her dreadful chairs, which I sank into, hoping it wasn’t as crippling as I’d recalled, though I was still too blown to do anything but pant.

  “You been running during the noonblast? And fresh from Gloriosa, too! Sure the heat hasn’t softened your wits, Raindrop?” nattered Felina, leads trailing from her scalp and her hand encased in some ominous-looking hardware, while the techs connecting her to a large console glanced anxiously at Mr Detective.

  “Didn’t want to miss your MindTrawl,” I gasped.

  “Vore incoming!” yelled Helston.

  Felina tutted as Vrox sauntered through the door. “And you’ve disturbed the mantivore’s siesta by rushing across The Square as if a veinworm colony was on your tail.”

  I shivered, recalling only too clearly what that was like, as Seth and I had tangled with a veinworm colony while fleeing from The Council.

  Meanwhile Vrox sidled up to Felina, getting as close as he could, effectively blocking the techs from accessing the right side of her body. The only space in the crowded room big enough for a Vrox-sized creature, was the strip of flooring by my chair, yet when Felina shooed him away, he ignored it, preferring to squeeze in against the shelved wall behind her.

  I was clearly being punished for bouncing him out of my head when talking to Seth. Only a handful of days ago, I would have been begging Vrox to forgive me, miserable at being snubbed by him. Whereas, while the space in my head normally filled with mantivore thoughts still felt uncomfortably empty, I was beginning to appreciate sorting out my own ideas without the constant interruptions.

  “We’re nearly ready to start, Mistress Keeper,” cooed the soft-voiced tech wearing a Healer robe. “All you have to do is relax and answer the questions as they’re asked. Try not to hesitate, because that’s when you’ll feel a build-up of pressure.” His smile flicked off like a switch as he glanced at his machine and fiddled with a dial. “Don’t string this one out. I don’t like the look of her heartrate,” he added to his colleague, sounding a lot less syrupy.

  I stood up. “You shady, Felina?”

  “Let’s just get this roaching thing over with, shall we?” It was a relief to hear the snap back in her voice.

  Mr Detective cleared his throat. “Right Mistress Healer, let’s start with a few basic details, shall we? Can you tell me when you were born?”

  “28th June 305.”

  That makes her… sixty-two. She’s wearing well for a Cnican.

  “Where were you born?”

  “In the house where I live.”

  “Ah, a Cnican born and bred, then. Can you tell me the full name of your mother—”

  “How dare you bar me from my own Security Suite?” Cupert’s enraged roar drowned out Mr Detective’s quiet voice, despite being on the other side of the main door.

  “For The Council’s sake let the wretched Peaceman in, or we’ll never get this done!” snapped Mr Detective.

  “What’d I miss? I left instructions that I was to be notified when the prisoner was being MindReamed—” A beet-faced Cupert erupted into the stuffy area, jowls quivering in outrage.

  “MindTrawled!” I said.

  “Of course, Your Ladyship. You’re correct. Mr Peaceman is mistaken, we’re conducting a MindTrawl, nothing more,” said Mr Detective far too quickly.

  “And her heartrate’s speeded up,” announced the Healer-tech, before sliding into croon-mode, “Niiice deep breaths, Mistress Keeper. Nothing to worry about. Let’s try and relax, shall we?”

  “You roaching relax if you want. I’m now unsure if I’m being MindTrawled or MindReamed!” snapped Felina.

  “It’s a MindTrawl,” I called over the babble of voices. “And if you so much as twitch the wrong way, my legal team will be crawling all over the fine print.”

  Vrox snarled a threat of his own.

  “Have you taken her back to the block, yet?” demanded Cupert.

  “I’ve hardly started!” snapped Mr Detective.

  “What’s a block got to do with anything?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry about it, Your Ladyship. Mr Detective, here, is gonna pull out of her head whatever’s locked in there. Cos something is,” said Cupert. “Always reckoned there was something tilted about Felina Keeper, so I did.”

  Yeah. Given a chance, you’d have those of us who you reckon are tilted in a Collar and slave-slogged, never mind about the law! I pressed my lips together, far too tempted to say something to that effect.

  Vrox, however, uttered a snarling curse as he fixed Cupert with his silvered glare.

  “Niiice calming breaths, Mistress Keeper, come on now – let’s get that heartrate down, shall we?” cooed the tech in a voice generally used for small children and the brain-slagged.

  “Ready to continue, Mistress Keeper?” asked Mr Detective.

  “Well I wasn’t planning on doing anything else, seeing as I’m tethered to your roaching machine.” Felina’s spike of fear zipped through my head, tasting of copper and bile.

  That you, Vrox? Linking me up to Felina’s thoughts?

  The mantivore wasn’t paying any attention to me, though. Swaying slightly, he was completely focused on Felina, while my heartrate speeded up till it thudded in time to the beat on the monitor. It was uncomfortably fast, forcing me to pant as if I’d just run across The Square again. Closing my eyes, I envisaged it slowing… down… And as I did so, I watched Felina’s heartrate also dropping.

  “That’s it, well done, Mistress Keeper!” exclaimed the tech, adding in a different tone, “Pick up the pace, please. Or we’ll have to abort.”

  “Mistress Keeper – Felina. May I call you Felina?” said Mr Detective.

  “If you must.”

  She doesn’t like it, though. Thinks it shows a lack of respect. I swallowed, wondering how I suddenly became MindLinked to Felina and what I could do to stop it.

  “Can you tell me your earliest memory?” asked Mr Detective.

  What’s that got to do with Mother’s murder? Felina is also confused… upset… can’t…

  Vrox croons encouragement to his Queen, wanting this to be over.

  And Felina seizes upon it, her confusion melting away.

  “That!” She turns to Vrox. “Mantivore…”

  Not Vrox, though. Her mantivore – and it absolutely is hers. I can tell she regards it as hers with an uprush of love and affection – her mantivore is a queen. Croon is softer, warbling and wiser. Smaller than Vrox. Smoother scales and far more intense bioluminescent flickers… Three-year-old Felina is sitting in the dust
on the floor. In a cave. Spicy scent of LoveDrool surrounds her. She is happy… excited… chattering to the queen about the pretty colours… the jolting journey through The Arids in the queen’s arms…

  “Snatched. She was snatched by a mantivore queen.” The words fell out of my mouth, slurred and distorted, as I harvested my scattered wits into the present, away from the dark, sweetly-smelling cave lit up by Felina’s joy at being with her lovely, lovely queen… “Booty.”

  “Beauty,” sighed Felina.

  “S’what she called her,” I said, seemingly unable to keep Felina’s innermost thoughts to myself, as I tried to work out whether I was in a vore cave or the Security Suite.

  “Felina Keeper vore-snatched?” said Cupert. “That’s why they put in the block?”

  “Would they put a memory-blocker in to prevent her recalling the event? Surely that would cause all sorts of trauma,” asked Mr Detective.

  “Oh yeah. Vore-snatched brats can be a sunblasted nuisance, otherwise. Running away. Refusing to eat. Bawling to return to the horde. That sorta thing. Not that I know first-hand. But Father told me – reckoned he’d had a case…” Cupert stopped, eyes widening as he stared at Felina. “And this must’ve been it!”

  “Not relevant to the murder case, then,” said Mr Detective. “Let’s move on. Mistress Keeper, Mai Brarian’s death. What can you tell me about that?”

  BEAUTY? I WANT BEAUTY… MANTIVORE SCREAMS. BANGS. STINK OF BURNING. BIG MEN WITH BLADES AND GUNS BURST INTO MY LOVELY CAVE. I RUN. TRY TO HIDE. NASTY MAN PICKS ME UP AND HOLDS ME TOO TIGHTLY. SMELLS SWEATY...

  “She can’t. She can’t think past when they came to get her back. Killed the horde to get her back,” I said, between sobs.

  Felina wasn’t crying though.

  She stares across the room, seeing the felled mantivore, her scales now dull and grey, stained with dark blue blood and knows that all her life, part of her has been trapped in this moment, mourning the loss of the most wonderful creature she’s ever known.

  “And why would you know what Felina Keeper is thinking, Your Ladyship?” asked Mr Detective.

  Damita pressed a nosewipe into my hand, before I hiccupped, “I can feel her thoughts.”

  Mr Detective pinched his nose. “And how does that work?”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Too busy blowing my nose and mopping my burning eyes under my goggles, while struggling not to shed any more tears for a long-dead mantivore I never knew.

  “Can you pull her away from the business with the mantivore and get her to think about Mai Brarian’s murder, Your Ladyship?”

  “Mm.” I tried emptying my head of Beauty…

  Her lovely loping stride… her trick of putting her head on one side when Felina talked to her… her fascinated delight with everything Felina said and did—

  Mai Brarian – Mother! They want to know about how she died! I tried yelling at her.

  Felina’s fixed stare flinched. “Don’t need to shout. That’s got my skull ringing for the next decade, I reckon.”

  Clack of Felina’s sandals on the hall floor. Hiss of the door opening. Mother’s bed rumpled. Her sheets trailing onto the floor. All wrong… Untidy. Mother’s bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. Her body sprawled. Hair tousled and tangled over her face. Stink of vomit. Ermina Washer and Idaline Ferry are in the room, crying.

  “Have you touched anything?” I say aloud, as Felina’s angry voice bounces around my skull. “Tell me you haven’t moved her.”

  “Her nightdress was all up around her waist. We couldn’t leave it like that. Not for everyone to see,” sobs Ermina. “Not the likes of that putrid Peaceman.”

  Taking a shaking breath, I finally manage to break the MindLink. I don’t want to remember Mother like that. She was always so neat and so very, very beautiful. I wipe my eyes, again. “Her followers found her and rearranged her. Made her look more peaceful.”

  “Messed with the crime scene,” added Felina.

  “And what were you doing there, Felina? Revisiting the scene of your murder, were you?” said Cupert.

  “Another interruption like that and I’ll have you ejected from the Security Suite, Mr Peaceman,” said Mr Detective, not even bothering to look in his direction, too busy gazing at Felina and me.

  “Idaline came to get me. Wanted my help,” said Felina.

  “Her heartrate is accelerating, again,” said the tech.

  “Why did they want your help? Why not Cupert, instead?”

  “Makes sense,” Damita suddenly said. “If Mai had been… mucked about with, her followers would’ve wanted her looking trim and shady before Father arrived.”

  “Don’t they know about tampering with evidence?” asked Mr Detective.

  Damita shrugged. “Yeah. But they wouldn’t have cared as much about that as the likes of Cupert seeing her girlbits uncovered.” She turned to me. “The traces of vomit on the floor – was that left by the murderer?”

  “Better mop up Ermina’s puke,” Idaline says, walking down the passage to the cleaning cupboard.

  I shut my eyes tightly, as if that could stop these scenes flashing through my head. “No. It was Ermina who threw up.”

  Damita sighed. “I sent through traces of that roaching puke to the lab in Reseda and we were all set to get samples of gut flora from all males with the right handspan, once we got the results. It was one of our best leads.”

  “Clearly not,” said Mr Detective in that upswept Uppie accent that had me wanting to kick his boybits very hard.

  “Time to end this MindTrawl, then,” I announced.

  “Oh yes,” agreed the tech, already starting to peel leads from Felina’s head.

  Felina feels like she’s been hit with a traf-waggon loaded with olives. As for the business of the vore-snatch – sadness… relief… anger no one got around to telling her… She recalls the occasional examinations she had to undertake. Ma refused to take her, even more bad-tempered and emotional than usual – it was Papa that used to travel to Reseda with her— That’s right – they’d send a flyer for her and Papa… Why hadn’t she remembered that?

  I swiped my hands down my robe, desperate to shut out Felina’s thoughts. Because behind those recollections was a terrible weight of sadness for all her lost memories.

  A yearning wish for another life. Where Beauty and her horde are never tracked down. Where she stayed with the mantivores in their cave and never returned to Cnicus…

  Gritting my teeth, I visualised standing under an icy shower of water. Gasping for breath in the sudden freezing downpour. Skin pimpling in the pelting cold.

  Vrox flinched, wrinkling his muzzle at me in a silent snarl.

  But my mind was suddenly free of the dragging sadness that gnawed at Felina’s inscape. Sucking in a breath, I turned to Mr Detective. “Now it’s been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Mistress Keeper is in no way involved in my mother’s murder, I assume she is free to go.”

  “Of course, Your Ladyship.” His eyes locked onto my face, thoughtfully. “This MindLinking business… happens often to you, does it?”

  “Mostly with Vrox. Felina’s the first person other than the mantivore that I’ve Linked to.” I didn’t normally talk about this, but what with one thing and another, I was so shaken up the words just fell out of my mouth.

  “Often?”

  And why should that make any difference? “Yes.”

  “And the Nodery. You’re MindLinked to the Nodery, as well – aren’t you, Your Ladyship?” added Damita.

  Mr Detective’s eyes widened fractionally.

  I stood up, knowing I’d let slip something that should have stayed private. “Unless I am now a suspect in my mother’s death, I need to return to the Node, now that Felina’s been proved innocent.” But as I said it, I suddenly yawned, my jaw cracking and my body feeling as if the planet had suddenly gained a couple of extra gravity points. Looking across to Vrox, I realised he was exhausted. All that worry over Felina had been rough on the old mantiv
ore, who was used to getting a lot more sleep these days.

  That’s not me, though. If I keep Vrox out of my head, then I won’t feel so tired. Or confused…

  I sensed a swirl of emotions coming from him. Chiefly anger at my daring to shut him out, overlaid with a sliver of hurt that I no longer wanted him in my head. Though not the kind of hurt I’d felt. More like indignation at losing something that belonged to him, even though I was increasingly more like stinking meat—

  I closed my eyes. The freezing blast of water… needling onslaught purpling my skin… teeth chattering… I tottered, momentarily unbalanced by the speed at which the mantivore whipped out of my head, and flinched. Waiting for the dizzying sensation of emptiness that always happened once Vrox left my head. Except this time, those empty spaces weren’t so empty. My own thoughts… my own feelings… were filling my head without the weight of a mantivore mind squeezing my consciousness into something smaller and more scrambled. And just the possibility of preventing Vrox’s habit of thumping through my head whenever it suited him had me giddy all over again.

  Helston’s grip on my arm pulled me back to the here and now – still cooped up in the stuffy Security Suite, facing a relieved, if now concerned-looking Felina. “You look fit to hit the floor, Raindrop. Come home with me and get some sleep.” Her face split into a grin as she suddenly surged towards me, enveloping me in a wonderful, perfumed hug. “A thousand thanks and beyond. This lot would’ve had me Collared, or worse if you hadn’t come.”

  And Vrox… Gone was the proud mantivore lord, demanding respect. The quavering cry ringing round my skull was the outraged yelp of a cub whose queen had unfairly favoured one of his siblings.

  Vrox?

  PEACE, CHILD… Felina sent to him.

  I reeled in the backwash of the heavy wisdom and calm ringing through her command, which was suffused with the aura of another queen – an alien queen long gone.

  Vrox? I swear it was purely instinctive. An automatic reaching for the one who had provided light amongst the darkness of my mother’s rejection, after Auntie Hesta’s death. I really wasn’t relishing being Felina’s favourite at his expense.