“I think she threatened to do that if H’ana came back. If memory serves,” Dema said.
“Arch here, though—” Bella shot him a glance, as if she could not believe what she was saying. “Arch has an idea.”
Arch beamed. “H’ana’s got one friend there,” he said. “Kwek. We should talk to Kwek. And she knows me, too. She’ll listen to me.”
• • •
Kwek was not asleep. Sleep had been scant for two nights and she knew why, but even if it wasn’t that how could she sleep when the rain made that noise outside and the wind moaned like a dying Soldier? She should have stayed in Rowtt, in dry tunnels with whispers of ventilation and the reassuring clink of machinery.
—all those not-Soldiers’ fault, they brought me here—
There, someone said, practically, is where you wanted to go.
Not to stay! thought Kwek, not immediately aware that she was not alone.
The communicator she had worn when the not-Soldiers brought her here appeared in front of her eyes. How had it gotten here from wherever she had put it, did it move about by itself? She made a grab for it.
No, it’s a picture in your mind. Think, Kwek! I’m speaking to your mind!
It was Arkt!
I do not want to be here!
The communicator, Kwek.
She remembered where she had last seen it, and scrambled for it.
“It is about time you contacted me! I have been thinking about you day and night! Where is Gergtk? I want to talk to Gergtk!”
“Gergtk has gone to Wektt. Haknt is coming to see Nakeekt, though. You will see her soon.”
Silence. Then Kwek said more quietly, “I, I want to talk to Gergtk.”
“You can talk to me, Kwek. We’ve talked before. What do you want to say? Has something unpleasant happened to you?”
“I have to work,” Kwek said. The translator could not convey sullenness, but Arch, the thread still stretched between their minds, felt it. “I have to work in the fields and forest, I have to make clean the building where I live, I have to care for the grass on the landing field and elsewhere, I have to prepare food, I have to make—” Chirp. Some product, untranslatable. “I have to do this, I have to do that, I thought there would be more time to talk and remember and write things down and learn!”
“It’s not what you expected,” Arch prompted.
“No, it is not! I had to do many things in Rowtt, but not all at once! I had only one assignment at one time!”
“That’s because you’re in a small community—” Chirp. “A small complex. Everybody must do everything, in such a small place. Everyone does a little of everything in the places where we live, too.”
“It is like this where not-Soldiers live?” Kwek said dubiously.
“It’s like that in many places on the world where we live, those of us who speak to the mind.”
“But it leaves little time to do what I want!”
“But you didn’t want to go back to Rowtt,” Arch said. “And there isn’t any other place except Wektt.”
“In Rowtt they say Wektt is worse because the Demon is there. What is Gergtk doing there? The Demon will not let him survive!”
Arch said incautiously, “I don’t think it’s worse, but you could ask the Soldier who is coming with Haknt. He lives in Wektt.”
Kwek gasped, “A Demon Soldier is coming here?”
“No, no, he is not—”
“What is Haknt doing with the Demon? Has she gone over to his side?”
“Not exactly . . . Kwek—” she was making ambiguous noises, and he raised his voice—“You were having some doubts about what’s believed about Abundant God, weren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you have some doubts about the Holy Man and the Demon, too? Aren’t some of the people at That Place from Wektt?”
“Yes, but they do not belong there, that’s why they came here—Haknt is with a Demon Soldier? There is one on the spacecraft?”
Even the translator managed to invest the words with Kwek’s horror.
Bella muttered, “You shouldn’t have mentioned Wox. Kwek, Haknt is not on our spacecraft. She is in the small craft you traveled in with her and Gergtk, and she is close to you. They are coming to That Place—”
“She is coming with the Demon?”
Arch thought contacting Kwek might not have been the best idea he had ever had, but he had another one. The Commission would crow over a voluntary specimen, wouldn’t it?
He said, “Forget about the Demon. If you don’t want to go back to Rowtt, and you don’t want to stay at That Place, and you don’t want to go to Wektt, we could let you spend some time on our spacecraft. Do you want to do that?”
“Will the Demon be there?” Kwek said suspiciously.
“The Demon will not be here.”
“Nakeekt will not allow me to go.”
“Haknt can talk to Nakeekt about it. If she agrees, will you come?”
“Oh, yes,” Kwek said. “And maybe I will just go away with you when you go. Maybe I will never come back to this world again.”
Yes! Arch thought, but not to Kwek.
“You won’t have to, if that’s what you want. But for now, Kwek, now—”
Now took a few minutes to establish, because Kwek dithered. But she agreed at last to go for Nakeekt and tell her Kakrekt had sent Hanna to her. It ought to make Nakeekt think, at least, before she pulled out a weapon.
• • •
Kwek did not like being outdoors. Record-keepers did not have to go outdoors often, and she had been record-keeper for twenty summers, when she was not breeding, and when she was in a crèche she had not had to go out either. It got hot in the groves where she harvested the things that grew on trees, even more hot in the clearings where she dug and pulled other things up (with more effort than she was used to) from the ground. She wasn’t sure she ought to be going to Nakeekt on some Demon-consorting not-Soldier’s instructions and besides, Nakeekt was suspicious of the not-Soldiers to start with and had sent them away and besides, Haknt had a Demon Soldier with her and maybe Nakeekt would not like that either and besides, it was raining. Getting wet with rain was even worse than getting wet with her own sweat, which had never poured from her so copiously as it had since the not-Soldiers brought her here. And her billet in Rowtt had stayed cool, but her billet here sometimes remained hot all day and all night.
Kwek went, though; she knew what building to go to, and ran to it through the rain. Inside she started up a ramp. She got to the second level and realized she did not know which billet was Nakeekt’s, so she pounded on the first door she came to, pounded and pounded, and eventually started shouting.
Another door opened and a cross face peered out.
“What do you think you are doing? Why are you making noise at the door of a billet where no one sleeps?” said a Soldier she knew as Mwintsk.
Kwek thought Mwintsk was an unpleasant Soldier. Yesterday he had told her she was not digging fast enough, and then when they were eating he had told her not to jump around so much, and when had she said her time for breeding would come? But she said, “I have something to report to Nakeekt.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait!”
“I don’t know. Are you an officer?”
“I was an officer.”
“And it can wait?”
“Anything can wait! What can’t wait?”
“The Demon is here,” Kwek said.
“You have been dreaming. Go back to your billet and go back to sleep.”
A clear order from an officer overrode everything else.
“Very well,” Kwek said, and retreated down the ramp. That was an order, to be sure, but on the other hand this was not Rowtt, and she did not know where to find Nakeekt, and a Demon-Soldier was coming and Nakeekt had told Haknt never to come back and Nakeekt would not lik
e Kwek bothering her about Haknt and—
• • •
Wox poked Hanna’s shoulder. She came slowly out of—not sleep. An energy-conserving half-consciousness in which she spent more and more time, brain idling, systems at minimum.
One poke, but the intrusive fingertip would leave a bruise.
“What?” she said.
“The craft spoke.”
The pod was no longer over cloud but under it and in fact was on the ground. It had brought her back to exactly where she had specified: the landing field at That Place. Outside there was nothing but blackness, but a readout said the land was covered with steady rain again (or still, for all she knew). She touched a control point for outside audio, and heard the downpour’s monotonous drumbeat. No light showed in any direction and there was no sound of an alarm.
She felt Bella’s familiar touch in her mind.
Kwek was supposed to wake Nakeekt, but she . . .
Images. Kwek had run away, overwhelmed, into the rain. She was not even on a path, but she could see well enough in the dark to keep from running into things.
Have you tried . . .
Arch has tried, but she just keeps saying nonono . . . She has a com unit, but she doesn’t respond . . .
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said aloud.
“What?” said Wox.
“Nothing.”
Why? Bella said.
Hanna could not think of a reason. Something in her had sounded a warning, saying it was a mistake to add Kwek to the mix of uncertainties. But maybe it was only a short circuit in her own brain.
“I will go to Nakeekt now,” she told Wox. He got up immediately. He would stick to her until Kakrekt’s orders were carried out, unrelenting as her shadow.
The hatch seemed to take a long time to open, the ramp to descend. She knew it was not long, that her perception of time was skewed. She thought of the ghost for the first time in a long time.
where are you, ghost? you were good with a knife. could we get Wox’s knife do you think
And heard:
i think not. we’re too weak
She fingered the vials of stimulant in her pocket.
No! said Bella. Don’t even think about it! Telepathy’s the only advantage you have! And what if the blackout’s permanent next time?
Hanna and Wox went down the ramp and out into the rain.
• • •
You would think. You would think an artifact as sophisticated as the pod would give its passengers a way to keep dry outside. It carried plenty of supplies (minus, now, edibles) but it did not carry a single portable, one-person rain deflector. Hanna, from a plainer culture than the Polity’s, would have settled for a simple umbrella.
The landing field had been scythed almost to the dirt—Kwek had done a good job in spite of her objections, or others had worked with her—and the dirt had turned to mud. Hanna’s feet sank into it until she got to the edge, where the ground cover was thicker. Her clothes were plastered to her body, but there was one advantage: people who were dripping wet did not look so much like threats.
She supposed she would find Nakeekt in the same warren as before, the building in which she and Gabriel had slept, and paused to get her bearings. It did not matter how long she stood in the rain. She was already sodden. In the stillness she opened her mind and heard dreams. Oh, there was plenty of dreaming here!—and Soldiers’ dreams were as absurd as humans’.
Wox poked her again. She was two meters away before she knew she had moved. He took a step toward her and she hissed, “Don’t do that! Don’t touch me again!”
Something had ignited inside her, but he could not tell that from her face or her voice. He said, “You were not moving. You are to go to Nakeekt.”
She thought of the knife again. Wondered, if she cracked a vial of the stimulant next to one of those breathing tubes, would the gas affect him, knock him out, something—
H’ana.
Bella. Calming.
“Leave me,” she started to say aloud, but Wox would think she spoke to him and he would argue, or just hit her.
Leave me. Don’t distract me.
Bella knew evasion when she felt it. You’re not talking about distraction—you mean you’re doing something you want to conceal! What, H’ana? It can’t be good!
It’s something I have to do. Leave me, I said!
Wox’s long finger reached out again. She stumbled backward, almost losing her balance on the slippery ground. She wanted to kill him.
ghost, you never worried about weakness before!
that was before we went to
gadrah. i know
Hanna turned and started walking. Attacking Wox would be futile, and she had a low opinion of blind courage. She was convinced Michael Kristofik would be alive if he had not been without fear. If he had had the sense to be afraid they would never have gone to Gadrah in the first place.
H’ana, you are not thinking straight—
Get out of me! Get out!
She felt Bella leave, with the lingering impression of a hand—gentle, soothing—laid softly on her head. There might have been tears in her eyes. She could not be sure because they were full of rain. The adults who reared her had done that when she was a child, she would do it for Mickey if only she were there, let him go through a storm of anger and tears and wait patiently until he was calm and could accept love again. Especially if he had done something wrong.
She did not seem to be walking any more. She seemed to stand on a strip of grass and it carried her through the rain to the warren where Nakeekt lived, and then she seemed to stand on ramps that carried her up. Somewhere along the way she remembered to seek a light control. She knew where Nakeekt’s chamber was. It was near the one where she had briefly slept, and the Soldier who escorted her past it had not so much thought of it explicitly as been aware of Nakeekt’s door. The walls of the warren closed in, like the walls of underground Wektt, like Endeavor’s, like Jameson’s dominance, Earth’s restrictions. All choice seemed to have been suspended.
Kill Kwoort. The solution.
not hard. i don’t even like him
are you sure
i don’t
you don’t like Metra either. would you kill her
well why not
The ghost seemed to be considering this. Hanna left her to it.
She was at Nakeekt’s door. The sense of being conveyed had been illusory; her legs felt ready to give way. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself. She had caught a peripheral image from Bella of Kwek knocking, knocking at a door behind which no one waited. Nakeekt was behind this one.
Her own knock was tentative. Wox gave her a look, lifted his fist—Hanna flinched at that—and banged. Nakeekt opened the door almost at once. When she saw Hanna all her features changed, the great ears stood out for a moment and then wrapped tightly to the head, fast, and the breathing tubes swelled with a great intake of air.
“What,” said Nakeekt, “what are you doing here? Who is this?” and Hanna felt the Warrior’s impulse to shout for reinforcements.
“Kakrekt sent me,” Hanna said; she leaned against the doorframe in exhaustion, holding out the sealed message. “Kwoort is Holy Man in Wektt now, and he is standing in Kakrekt’s way. She wants to kill him.”
Absolute silence. There must have been a murmur of rain from the room beyond Nakeekt but Nakeekt’s astonishment, and Wox’s, outweighed it. So Wox had not known Kakrekt’s purpose—
Only seconds passed, perhaps, seeming longer. The rain became audible.
Presently Nakeekt said, “Come to my workplace.” She wheeled and went to a coverall hung from a peg on the wall. She threw off a robe and stepped into the coverall. She was back at the door in seconds, sealing the front of the garment, pushed past Hanna and headed toward the ramps and down, moving
fast. Hanna tried to hurry, and felt Wox shove her and shove her again. Then he gave up and almost carried her the rest of the way, talking to Nakeekt, explaining his role as guardian or captor, and they came to a room where Nakeekt stopped and when Wox let go, Hanna slid to the floor. The two Soldiers were talking and she could not understand what they said, but the translator was not at fault. She was losing comprehension along with strength.
Her hand fumbled at a pocket, nightmare-slow. She nearly dropped the vial of stimulant, and hardly had the strength to break it open. Something seemed to say this was a bad idea, but what else could she do? She got the thing cracked, and started to inhale.
The only advantage you have . . .
Chapter XIII
THE ROOM CAME INTO FOCUS. Desks, benches, writing materials: a human would call it an office. The twisted halves of the vial lay where Hanna had thrown them, as far away as her weak arm could manage. Nakeekt and Wox stared at her.
“What was that?” Nakeekt said.
“Something for my well-being.”
She hoped she had not absorbed more than a few molecules of the vapor before coming to her senses and hurling the vial away. She waited for the thrum . . .
Nothing.
There were more vials. If she got desperate enough she would have to use them. But not yet. Adrenaline, from the surge of fear at what she had almost done, made her alert, however briefly.
“Can you get the substance Kakrekt requires quickly?” she asked. “Will the wait be long?”
Silence. All Nakeekt’s eyes were open. So, surprisingly, were Wox’s.
“What is it?” Hanna said as the silence went on. “Is there a reason why you delay?”
Nakeekt said, “Kwoort has cooperated with This Place to the highest degree.”
Wox said, “Kakrekt Commander would assassinate the Holy Man?”
Hanna looked from one to the other and thought, Oops.
• • •
Nakeekt didn’t want Hanna, but she wanted Wox. She assumed, perhaps correctly, that if left to herself Hanna would make a run for the pod and disappear. Not that Hanna could have moved fast enough to escape if she did run; but Nakeekt did not know that. So Hanna was thrust into what evidently was a closet, which was without a lock and would have been crammed with heavy objects if Nakeekt and Wox had not taken them out and piled them against the door to keep her in.
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