by Jo Clayton
“I suppose I’d better check with Ti Vnok and see what’s happening. I don’t really count on them much, Lee. Fads explode and wither so fast, sometimes, you blink and they’re gone. Or the Gray Market rips off the design and undercuts your prices.” She twisted her face into a clown’s sad grimace. “And don’t tell me I’ve gone all negative. It’s just… I don’t hive anything to aim at, Lee.”
“I know, Shadow. You’ve got to close out this bit first before you can look ahead. I’d tell you to stop fussing, but I expect that’s useless.” With a quick twist of her body Aleytys was on her feet. “You need your harp. I’ll have Doll bring it out to you. And you can pay your way with a concert tonight. Lylunda and I-and Tigatri, of course-we’ll be your guests.
19. Report and Farewell
1
Shadith stood irresolute for several minutes outside Digby’s branch office in Citystate Rhapsody, dredging through memory for any loophole she might have missed in the story she’d cobbled to cover the abstraction of the Taalav. She passed her hand over her hair, patted the soft springy curls into place. She needed a trim, but she wasn’t going to bother with that now. Once her report was finished, she was booked on a flier heading for the Landing Field and on a shuttle to take her to the University Transfer Station and her own ship. Digby’s Backhoe was parked up there too, but she wasn’t going near that ship again. Then she’d make the jigs and jogs on the long and complicated flight to Vrithian. She was tired and unhappy. Some time spent in a place where she didn’t have to worry about any thing would be a blessing.
This street wasn’t far from Star Street and was busy this late summer morning. She was rather like a boulder diverting the flow momentarily of the traders, crew, and others moving past her in a steady stream. When she started to get annoyed stares, she sucked in a breath and plunged inside.
2
The Greeter ’bot having been programmed to admit her whenever she called, Shadith walked through into the inner office without having to wait. The office manager looked up. “Yes?”
“I need a Clear room and a connect to Digby. Tell him I’ve got the location and I’m ready to report.”
“We’ve just swept Two. Touch the announcer and I’ll let you through.”
“Thanks.” Shadith left and walked down a short hall,-tapped the annoucer outside door number two and waited for the massive plug to slide to one side. The Clear rooms were baffled and insulated, as free as possible from any sort of insinuation from outside.
She seated herself by the desk, moving her shoulders uneasily as the door slid shut and sealed itself. This was a bit too much like a cell to please her. If Digby got irritated enough at her quitting, it might run from security to prison between one breath and the next. She told herself that was crazy, he’d never shown any inclination to over-control his agents, but the unease wouldn’t go away. She leaned back, closed her eyes. While she was waiting for the connection to,;,so through, weariness swept over her and she drifted into a doze.
She woke with a start as a soft chime announced Digby’s arrival. When she opened her eyes he was sitting in a simulated armchair behind the desk, still in his professorial guise. He leaned forward, a lock of shining gray hair falling across his brow, a grave and disapproving set to his face. “Why University, Shadith? I expected you to report to Spotchalls.”
“I had reasons for making the full, report here, Digby. I’ll explain them later. First, the location. In the Universal Catalog, the sun is listed as 87950 KLD MLYD. One of the stars in the Callidara Pseudo Cluster. The world in question is third from the sun. The xenobi’s name was Prangarris, a Herthite. He’s dead, by the way. The Taalav wrapped him in a crystal cocoon, then proceeded to follow him into death, leaving very few traces behind. A few crystals and some decayed organic matter with enough definition left to identify it as Taalav.”
“The transplant didn’t take?”
“From what I saw, definitely not.”
“The smuggler?”
“You told me we weren’t required to produce her. I see no reason to turn her over to the Kliu; they’ll have what they want. At the moment she’s on Wolff, visiting Aleytys until it’s safe to get on with her life.” She leaned forward, set a flake on the desk. “The complete report, everything I’ve done, everything I’ve learned about Hutsarte, my expenses-it’s all there.”
“So you’ve pulled it off again. Congratulations, Shadow. Good job.” He leaned back, the chair creaking realistically as he shifted his non-weight. “I have a feeling you’re not happy about this.”
“Vm not.” She went through the speech she’d worked out with Aleytys, finished, “When I saw they were dead, the problem went away. But when you lean on luck, it melts under you and you fall on your face. Who knows what I’ll come up against next time. So. No next, time. Why I’m here on University. No point in going all the way to Spotchalls just to say I quit.”
She pushed the chair back and got to her feet. “It’s been interesting, Digby. But it was a mistake from the beginning.”
He said nothing, didn’t try to stop her, simply watched as she left the room.
3
She was yawning as she palmed the lock on her apartment; all the strain of the job, all the suspicion and the chewing over and over of what might happen, how she could counter it, all that had caught up with her and weariness was like a blanket smothering her. What she wanted more than anything was to stretch out on her bed and sleep for a week.
Instead, she put on water to boil for tea, logged a call through one of the Rhapsody skipcoms and had a shower while she waited for it to go through.
Aleytys raised a brow. In the screen her face was slightly distorted and her skin had acquired a greenish tone, but her voice came through clearly enough. “I see you survived.”
“I took your advice and was tactful.” Shadith patted a yawn. “Spla, I’m tired. All tensed up and ready to act, then the whole thing just dribbled away. Whatever. Tell Lylunda she should probably hang about for the rest of the month, but after that the heat should be off her.” She yawned again. “You talked to Harskari yet?”
“About an hour ago, matter of fact. She says the injection is taking just fine and the new plants she picked up are thriving. She’ll be going back for more in a few months, give the source time to settle down. Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
“Probably I’ll go see if Swarda’s home. I need to talk to him. Then I’ll probably go have a look at Harskari’s garden.”
Aleytys’ mouth twitched; it wasn’t a smile. “I might join you for a few months. I’m tired of the sniping round here. Nice that your severance was a friendly one. And go get yourself some sleep, Shadow. You can start your new life tomorrow.”
Shadith came to awareness abruptly.
She was, seated in front of a sensor board. In a familiar pilot’s chair. She was on the Backhoe. Her body leaned forward, her hands lifted, began moving over the board, entering a destination code. She watched the code print out on the main screen, committed it to memory automatically, then realized with dull horror that she couldn’t turn her head, that no part of her body answered her will.
This was confusing.
She’d meant to leave the Backhoe in the University tie-down. If Digby wanted it back, he could send someone to fetch it.
She should have been frightened and angry. She couldn’t feel anything.
It was as if she were back in the Diadem, looking through the body’s eyes, but with no connection to the other senses or to the body’s emotions.
Her mind barely worked. A word or an image rose to awareness, then faded. A long time later a new thing welled up to take its place.
day 1
Digby
day 2
Digby’s techs…[[image of Tron Ga working over her body with humming, blinking readouts, fitting the exo to her, adjusting the probe blockers]]
day 3
know me. Template…
day 4
[Nothi
ng. Blackout.]
day 6
…tailored…
… Zombi…
… no.
day 7
Mind…
mindlock…
… no.
day 8
[Nothing. Blackout.]
day 9
…both…
Clearroom…
… yes.
[[image of self waking, seeing Digby seated behind the desk]]
And so it went, word by word, dredged up from the edges of her mind, putting the picture together. There was time, plenty of time, nothing to do while the Backhoe ’splitted toward its enigmatic destination and her body moved to someone else’s programming, feeding itself and keeping itself clean-nothing to do but struggle to think, to understand what had happened to her.
day 15
At measured-intervals her awareness left her for about a day. It wasn’t sleep, it was as if someone had touched a button and turned her off. The timer on the sensor panel told her how long she was gone, but she had no internal sense of time passing and that bothered her a lot-all the more because she could do nothing about it.
Interval by interval she pieced together what this was about.
day 19
Through his techs and their reports, Digby knew her body and her consciousness-at least as much of them as could be measured from the outside. And he could do anything he wanted to her because he had a fine and frisky scapegoat to blame it on. The Kliu.
He wanted everything she knew. Her history. Aleytys. Vrithian. The Diadem. Everything. He’d been after her from the beginning to tell him things, pressing as hard as he could without driving her away. He’d accepted her evasions because he had no choice about that. When she quit,, though… that ultimate evasion was something he must have decided he couldn’t allow. And with the Mu hanging about, he didn’t even have to kill her when he was finished; all he had to do was brainwipe her and turn her loose. He could even get her back to University and let her be found wandering mindless, traces of drugs in her that might be linked to the Kliu. He didn’t like them; it would appeal to his peculiar humor to get them barred from University as they’d gotten themselves barred from Marrat’s Market.
Information. Miser of knowledge, sitting in his electronic parlor turning over the golden rounds of his secrets.
As the days passed, her thinking became measurably quicker, the alternate pathways strengthening and growing more complex with exercise.
day 25
Huh! Omphalos had some use after all.
The work she’d done to slide around their mindwipe had set up so many subroutes and branches that even the most effective lock couldn’t cut all of them out of service.
Digby’s techs are the best around, but they’ve got the limitations that come from knowing too much. Blessings be for that. Let’s see what else they missed…
She couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t smell or taste the food she consumed, couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t even twitch an eyeball. She tried. Over and over she tried to wriggle around the bounds of the lock and tease out a way of getting her body back. Over and over she rammed against a wall there was no penetrating.
Hm. If I can’t go around, maybe I can pull my memories and shove them in a cyst like I did for the thing with Omphalos. Then he can probe all he wants and get nada for his pains.
But nada was what she got when she tried it. It was as if memory were marked Read Only. She could see but not touch. She crashed into the wall until her mind ached with the effort.
And in the trying she called up memories she didn’t want to view again, images that oozed through the mindlock and flared into brief existence in front of her eyes.
IMAGE flares of light, red and blinding white, long torturing squeal of landers as they came rushing through the night and dropped the catchnet on the Weaver’s house, her mother’s house. Dark figures pouring from the landers, it seemed as though there were thousands of them though later she knew it was only a dozen men. They came through the catchnet as if it didn’t exist; the web that paralyzed whatever it touched, they killed her mother and the breeding male who lived there, they took her sisters, her six shining sisters who danced dreams for the Shallana, they took her, too, but only because she was young enough there’d be a market for her.
IMAGE She bent over the narrow casket she dug from a wall in an ancient ruin, ran her three-fingered hands over the panels, brushing the dust away so she could see the patterns some long-dead artist had carved into the stone, white jade it was, the walls thin as fine porcelain. Amazing that it was intact so long after it was made. Her touch triggered it somehow and the lid rose upward. Inside she saw a pile of ash and something else, a necklet she thought at first, a delicate gold chain, complex and supple, draping heavily over her hand when she lifted it, fine wires spun into the petals of stylized blooms with jeweled hearts, jewels that sang single pure notes as she turned her hand and inspected them. She spread out the circle and fitted the Diadem onto her head.
IMAGE Darkness. Nothing. Struggle to be, to see, to do anything she could to break the intolerable tedium of existence inside the treasure tower of the RMoahl. Day upon day of wrestling with her limitations as she learned to ride the Curator’s mind so she could get beyond the boundaries of her patterned life. Then the gem that held her soul sounded its note as a hand snatched it from the case. Darkness again as the Diadem slid into a loot sack and the thief Stavvar began retracing his steps.
day 31
When she emerged from the memory dreams and the futile campaign to free herself from the lock, she began watching as much of her body as she could see in the glimpses that chance allowed her. Knowledge was about the only lever she had access to.
The pattern of the body’s actions around the blackouts told her what was happening there. Every four days, when the body moved into the cabin and stretched itself out on the cot, she’d catch a glimpse from the corner of her eye of something descending, little more than a sense of movement and a glint of metal. A moment later she’d be gone-not into sleep but into the blackout. It was easy to tell which was which. Sleep came gradually, settling like a blanket over her. The blackout would cut a thought in half.
And when she woke, her.mind had slowed again.
She had to exercise it as she would stiff muscles to get the flow moving steadily once more.
Drugs. He’s got me set up so he can reinforce the lock and replay the program. He doesn’t want to take a chance on them wearing off before I get to where I’m going.
day 32
[Nothing. Blackout.]
day 33
He couldn’t have installed the drugs and the delivery system in Backhoe any time after he assigned her to me. He had to have set this up before then. What did he say? Ah. ‘There’s a pattern that… shall we say, limits your usefulness.’ And this. ‘It just means I have to be careful.’ This is how he’s being careful. He fixed it so he could control me if he had to. I wonder if he has this kind of thing installed for all his agents?
day 35
Memories. They were some use after all, not just an additional torment, replaying for her what she’d been.
In the distraction of her struggle, she’d forgotten she was a mindrider. The image’s that appeared and reappeared in her efforts reminded her of this.
The only minds available on this ship were a few spiders, some anonymous insets, and a roach or two; manipulating them gave her a small triumph and drove back the grays that had been closing in on her as she exhausted every possibility she’d thought of to escape this trap.
At first she could only feel them, but the more she searched them out and the more she settled into one after the other, sending her tiny mounts scurrying here and there, the more access she had to that part of her mind. She was pleased with herself and delighted at this new joke on the certainties of superior techs.
day 41
When much of the stiffness from the blackout had worn off, she reached for one of
the spider minds, looked through the compound eyes at the bug it was sucking, dry. And sighed. So what if she could play with bugs? Where did that get her? Her melancholy lightened briefly as she visioned roaches dancing over the sensor board, but that was not practical…
A flood of sudden thoughts overloaded the still laboring pathways of her awareness and for a moment all she knew was chaos.
When she could think again, she picked out the idea that sparked the deluge, shaped it into a small neat statement and contemplated it. If my mindride talent escaped the lock, maybe other talents are also available to me.
The translator was useless, but her ability to mind-move small objects close to her (close being within reach of her arms) seemed to offer interesting possibilities. Digby didn’t know about that one. At least, she didn’t think he knew. So maybe he hadn’t programmed the Backhoe’s kephalos to counter it.
First I see if I can move something, then I figure out how to use it.