Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe)

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “We think that in some way they use the Festival to determine the numbers within each Tribe for the upcoming generation,” Grant added. “After the last one, the Pardii Tribe doubled—at the expense of the Tookii, who went from owning mines in the foothills to working on farms near here.”

  “They doubled in what sense?” I asked, puzzled. “More offspring?”

  “We’ve never seen an immature Drapsk,” Madeline volunteered, again with an uneasy glance at Copelup, who was now thoughtfully sucking most of his tentacles as he sat aimed in our direction. “It’s not something you can ask about, you know.”

  Grant explained: “I can’t say if they doubled exactly—Norm thinks so, but we don’t have any stats to back it. But within weeks of the Festival, there were Pardii wherever one went in the foothills, and they’d been rather rare before.”

  All this was fascinating, and information I would definitely pass along to Morgan, but it wasn’t helping me. “Grant. Madeline. I need to get to the shipcity and leave Drapskii. Tonight, if possible.”

  Both smiled wisely and shook their heads—not exactly the reaction I’d expected. “Please don’t worry, Sira,” Madeline said in a gentle, humoring voice. “Copelup’s told us how nervous you are about competing. He said you might panic a bit as it approached. But it will be all right. You’ll see.”

  “And it’s very important to them, you know,” Grant added seriously, as if there could be no doubt of the significance of what the Drapsk wanted.

  “Oh, I know,” I replied glumly, glaring down the table at Copelup. Another plan scuttled. I found a smile somewhere and asked brightly: “So, what can you tell me about the actual Competition?”

  These Humans had been on Drapskii too long. “We couldn’t tell you even if we knew, Sira,” Madeline answered. “The Drapsk were very specific in what we can talk about with you.”

  I waved at Copelup, who was coming my way as supper unofficially drew to its conclusion—most of the Humans rising with mutters of tasks to be done. “Why am I not surprised by that either?” I said, but not accusingly. These were my hosts, after all.

  And apparently in charge of my entertainment as well, for no sooner had I stood to return to my room, when Cory Brightson reappeared at my elbow, beaming from ear to ear. “We’re leaving for the game in about thirty minutes, Sira. Okay?”

  “Great,” Grant Murtree spoke up before I could so much as open my mouth. “This will take your mind off the competition,” he added with a meaningful look. “Just what you need.”

  “Can’t wait,” I said weakly, wondering what I was in for now.

  INTERLUDE

  The group had met in secret, made decisions without her, and left this message planted in the mind of her servant. Rael waved one hand in dismissal, having pulled the information from the young Denebian’s thoughts with the subtlest of touches.

  It paid to have good help.

  Find Sira. Larimar following Morgan. Enlist Pella’s aid for the cause.

  The message, such as it was, bore the taste of Ru di Mendolar’s sarcasm. Or perhaps it was Rael’s own interpretation of the likelihood of success for any of its components.

  Find Sira? Rael upended her case on the bed where a servant would find the pile of clothing and unobtrusively deal with it. If Sira didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t be. Simple as that.

  Larimar following Morgan? Rael kicked off her shoes, sliding her toes, with their floral stencils, into a pair of slippers. No one could say she hadn’t warned them. Setting a tracker on the Human was about the surest way she could imagine to bring their group—and its aims—to his attention.

  Enlist Pella? Rael walked slowly to her balcony, drawing the delicate scent of night-blooming flowers into her nostrils, gazing up at the dusting of stars overhead. The air was, as always, warm and caressing on her skin. She would talk to her sister, for whatever good the group thought it might do. There was little risk; Pella was no more fond of the present Council than any of them and wouldn’t bother to betray them.

  But enlist her self-centered, self-serving nature to the cause—or to any purpose that wasn’t of immediate benefit to Pella herself?

  Rael thought it more likely the Denebian sun would rise at the snap of her fingers.

  Chapter 18

  IT was, beyond any doubt, the strangest thing I had ever seen. And while I hadn’t traveled Morgan’s great distances across the known galaxy, I’d lived a good deal longer than most of my kind—having waited unChosen and unchanged for the better part of two generations—so I could truthfully say I’d seen my share.

  But this?

  I sat on the hard bench, my feet barely fitting on the floor before the back of the next row in front of me, my breath coming out in frosty puffs, and pulled my borrowed coat more tightly around my shoulders. Below me was a perfect oval of white ice; above was an arching roof, well-insulated against the daytime’s remaining heat.

  We were here, I’d been informed proudly by Copelup, to watch a game introduced by the Humans and taken up with a passion by the Makii Drapsk. It was called hockey.

  “Hot sombay, Sira?” A cup was pressed into my numb fingers and I accepted its promise of warmth gratefully. Madeline Brightson sat down beside me, tossing a corner of a thermal wrap over my knees before tucking the remainder over her own lap.

  “Th-thanks, Madeline,” I stuttered. The oval of ice was surrounded by a ring of benchlike seating, about twenty rows in total, at the moment almost completely filled by Drapsk. As they were all of the Makii Tribe, with the exception of Copelup on my right, the effect was that of a giant eye, pupiled in white within an iris of purple. The tiny cluster of Humans and other non-Drapsk around me hardly dented the pattern.

  “Best to warm up now,” my guide advised, turning on the wrap. Lifesaving warmth began creeping around my legs. “If you get chilled, it’s a lot harder to be comfortable.”

  Feeling chilled already, I turned guiltily to Copelup. “Did you want to share some of this?” I asked, not quite sure how far the material would stretch. If necessary, I supposed the Drapsk could sit on my knees.

  He dipped his plumes to touch my hand briefly. “My thanks, Contestant Morgan, but this temperature is not a hardship to my kind.”

  A Human elbow nudged my rib cage. “If you think this is cold, just wait until the Drapsk turn on their system.”

  I sat between the Human and the Drapsk, neither about to answer any truly useful questions, and wondered with a shivering yawn how much of this I had to endure before being allowed back to my room. And that lovely-looking bed.

  “Here they come,” crowed Allie Murtree, tapping me on my shoulder as she leaned over me to point at the row of figures moving on to the ice. They were, I observed with a sense of complete confusion, balancing on what looked to be knife edges. As I watched intently, it was obvious these edges were giving each of the figures remarkable traction on what had to be a very slippery surface.

  Judging from the stafflike weapon each carried, and the abundance of body armor covering all but the plumes of the Drapsk participants, I resigned myself to some sort of gladiatorial game, thinking much less of both the Drapsk and the Humans.

  “There’s Linda,” Madeline announced.

  I readjusted my thinking, finding it unreasonable the pleasant woman beside me would allow her young daughter to battle for spectators.

  “Perhaps you’d care for an explanation of the game before it begins, Contestant Morgan?” Copelup intruded slyly.

  I weighed the potential embarrassment—and boredom—of remaining ignorant against having to put up with Copelup’s doubtless unending rounds of self-congratulation. Curiosity won.

  “So,” I said, minutes later, not sure if I’d made a good bargain after all, “both teams compete for the puck. The team that retrieves it successfully makes an attempt to put the puck into the other team’s net. Each net entry is called a goal. The team with the most goals wins. That’s it?”

  Madeline had been enjoyi
ng my lecture from the Drapsk immensely. There was a feather of laughter in her voice as she said: “You’ll learn it faster by watching, Sira. They’re about to start.”

  Starting involved an ear-shattering buzz, a roar from those around me who vocalized under excitement, and a furious bout of synchronized plume fluttering by the Drapsk. I paid no attention to my neighbors, instantly absorbed in the action below.

  I’d been warned the players were not professionals. In fact, several were the children of the Humans from the agri-lab, the adults playing separately so as not to risk harming the child-sized Drapsk who, Madeline informed me, had formed a substantial waiting list for a chance to strap on skates, equipment, and grab a stick.

  They may not have been experts, but to my eyes there was an immense amount of skill being exhibited by all concerned. To move quickly in a straight line on ice was one thing—I was reasonably sure with a sufficiently vigorous push, I could do the same. But to stop in a cloud of snow, to whirl and dodge past opponents? The Human players, all lanky limbs and prone to tumble for no reason I could detect, kept pace with the slower but sturdy Drapsk and their advantage of a low center of gravity. I forgot all about my numb toes.

  “When does it go in the net?” I asked after a furious passage of puck from stick to stick to stick.

  “Now!” shouted everyone around me as the small black object soared past the well-protected head of the Human goalie.

  Madeline distracted me by immediately yanking the thermal wrap up to our chins. From the feel of it, she’d also raised the temperature. I was about to protest, when a sudden roar overhead explained her precaution.

  The Drapsk system she’d warned me about was now in full gear. A series of fans directed a virtual storm wind down our necks and over our shoulders. Just as I was trying to decide whether they meant to kill us by hypothermia or deafen us all, the fans stopped.

  “What was that for?” my question rang out regrettably loudly in the relative silence. Several Humans coughed or chuckled.

  “Cheering,” Copelup said from beside me. “It is a time-honored part of sports, Contestant Sira.”

  I grew accustomed to the cold, including the galelike cheers of the Drapsk, and understood the game sufficiently by its end to appreciate some of the better moves. It ended in a tie, a score greeted with more enthusiasm by my immediate neighbors than I’d expected from their partisan commentary throughout. Perhaps I didn’t understand the game after all.

  I certainly didn’t understand the motivation of the Drapsk, something that kept me silent and in thought as we marched from our seats.

  “You are puzzled, Contestant Morgan,” Copelup stated, reading me correctly.

  I nodded. We waited by the arena’s doors for the Humans to obtain their vehicles. Fortunately, the Drapsk and I would go back to our residence immediately, while others waited for their respective offspring to shed their hockey gear. I was tired enough to lean against one Drapsk-smooth wall. “Yes, I’m puzzled, Skeptic Copelup. Any chance you’d answer questions about this sport?”

  He waved a four-fingered hand in amusement. “Ask!”

  “The fans carried your cheers to the ice surface, where they could be detected by the Drapsk players, correct?”

  “Correct,” he agreed. “It would otherwise be very difficult to communicate. The air tends to rise in the arena.”

  “And you said it was ‘cheering.’ ”

  “Correct again, Contestant Morgan. You have grasped matters well.”

  I raised an eyebrow for my own benefit, watching his ring of six fleshy tentacles for want of a better clue on that eyeless globe of a face. “I’m not entirely sure I have, Copelup. Your people ‘cheered’ regularly, at exactly the same intervals following the first goal. Was I missing something?”

  “No, no. That is correct, too. You are most observant.”

  “Then you often cheered when there was nothing worth cheering for, and failed to cheer when there was—unless I missed the key strategy of the game,” which was, I confessed to myself, possible.

  Copelup rocked back and forth on his feet, a sign of thoughtful consideration. Maybe. “You are not the first to question this,” he said at last. “While I do not understand how this confuses other species, I will attempt to explain the obvious. We perform the empakii—cheer—to inspire effort, not as appreciation for some outcome or skill.”

  “That seems very well-mannered of you. And hardly confusing,” I agreed.

  “Of course,” Copelup said more quietly, looking around as if in fear of eavesdroppers, “we are careful to ensure that only those who understand the game are in the arena, so all know when to provide amapka—the discouragement—to the appropriate team.”

  “Discouragement?” I echoed, somehow sure the Drapsk was about to dispel any understanding of their nature I foolishly thought I might have gained tonight.

  “Surely you noticed that the Drapsk of both teams were Makii, Contestant Morgan.”

  “Yes,” I said warily.

  “The Tribe is the unit of our society,” he recited seriously. “We do not approve of winning within the Tribe any more than we approve of losing, Contestant Morgan. So we must provide amapka to the team in the lead, or else they might exert themselves and attain a position of superiority over the other team.”

  “So it was no accident the game ended in a tie.”

  Copelup stretched himself to his full height, saying proudly, “All games within a Tribe end in a tie, Contestant Morgan. It is the only satisfactory resolution.”

  A passing Human herding a young player still in equipment, carrying a bag bigger than himself, overheard this last comment and winked at me. He held up four fingers, then pantomimed a yawn, adding: “No matter how many overtime periods it takes.”

  When I was finally granted the asylum of a dark room, closed door, and warm bed, perversely, I couldn’t relax. Sleep was out of the question, even if my eyes ached unless shut. My thoughts milled around, attempting to force sense from the bits and pieces I’d acquired about the Drapsk and what lay ahead of me. I still had no idea if I was being judged whenever Copelup and I were together, or if there remained some day of reckoning to come. If so, I hoped he was mannerly enough to inform me when it arrived.

  I’d made some progress toward my escape, in a way. I’d managed to find out where I was. Drapskii wasn’t too far—by translight—from the planet Auord, a world I’d visited before and so could locate through the M’hir. That distance, however, was considerably beyond what I’d ever attempted, and I seriously doubted there would be pathways of power leading from Drapskii to aid me. It was an effort I’d make only if given no other choice. There were other, more mundane options, starting with the shipcity and its starships.

  I seriously thought about ’porting to the walkway near the Makmora. The locate was crystal clear in my mind. However, less clear was what I could do once there. I had no way to pay for passage. Could I sneak aboard a ship loading cargo? A hundred schemes ran through my mind, each less practical than the last.

  And what about the Drapsk? There was something about the little beings, something uncanny enough to tangle my thoughts whenever I considered leaving. How could I compete for a species that refused to permit winners or losers? What did they want from me?

  I turned over the pillow and gave it an unnecessary punch. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to find Morgan.

  And say what to him? I asked myself. The fresh surface of the case took some of the heat from my flushed cheek. “Hello, Jason,” I muttered into it. “Found any bits of me yet?”

  I rolled on my back and stared up in the dark. “I don’t care about them anymore,” I said softly, surprised it was true. I no longer even cared much about my enemies, though I’d been con tently fanning my anger against them throughout the past year.

  Then what did I want? Tired, lonely, and alone, there was only one thing. I couldn’t stop myself from throwing all the power I possessed into one urgent sending, one plea into the seethin
g turmoil of the M’hir.

  Perhaps I should have cared who might overhear. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered suddenly but making sure Morgan was all right, that he knew I wanted him back with me and not out there.

  It was a dangerous extension of myself. I risked sanity as well as my grip on the body lying in that bed in the Makii border town on Drapskii. But I dared the heart-search, pouring everything into my image of Jason Morgan, the other, missing, half of myself.

  . . . darkness . . . I floated, drifting in a landscape of energy pathways and nothingness, myself the brightest object until, at a distance, I spotted something familiar. I pushed myself toward it, reaching desperately for contact, until I touched . . . a tiny core of light surrounded by madness, guarded by rage . . .

  . . . and was flung back into myself.

  I knew that rage, that overwhelming anger. It wasn’t Morgan’s, not wholly. What I’d tasted around his consciousness, blocking me out more effectively than any shielding I’d taught him, had come from me.

  What had I done to him?

  My body shivered as though I was still at the Drapsk hockey arena. I realized without caring I’d probably come close to life-threatening convulsions as I’d drained myself, although I would have regretted causing my hosts the distress of finding my corpse.

  Everything—my thoughts, my surroundings—clarified and grew still.

  I would leave here in the morning. I would find Morgan. I would remove the poison of my hate from his mind and return it to my own.

  Where it belonged.

  INTERLUDE

  “Your air tag, Hom Sarc?”

  Barac kept his distaste to himself, smiling graciously at the Human female operating the tag point. He leaned forward, anticipating her next request.

  “Do you accept responsibility for the air you share on Plexis?” she asked. At close range, she gazed up at him through her tinted lashes and returned his smile. When he nodded, she tapped his cheek once lightly to affix the tag to his skin.