A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition)

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Sawnda’at spoke as if repeating a lesson, his face donning a remote mask. “Sira di Sarc, we will not condone any further perversion. That your experiment was successfulin initiating Commencement has absolved you and your kin from punishment, although you knowingly flouted the Prime Laws which guard our kind and the M’hir from alien contamination. The Human, Morgan, will be caught and his knowledge of us erased—as should have been done long before now.” He pointedly refrained from looking at Barac.

  Morgan. His name dropped so casually from the Clansman’s lips sent an almost physical shock through me. How dare they try to make Morgan pay for their mistakes? I was no less to blame, I thought bitterly. What Morgan knew made him a danger, a source of humiliation, a potential threat that could ignite the vast numbers of his race against the powerful but scattered Clan.

  I was Sira Morgan, not Sira di Sarc of the Clan. The price of being both was too high. I began to test the strength of the paralysis that held me.

  “Sira di Sarc,” Sawnda’at continued. “You will Join with our Choice for you, since you yourself are neither Chosen nor unChosen. Following a successful Joining and pairing, you will be free to continue your life as a Chosen, no longer bound save by the Prime Law.”

  I’d have liked to raise an eyebrow at this, but had to settle for a cough. “Who have you chosen for me, may I ask?”

  Faitlen vanished from his seat on the dais to rematerialize before me, but his attention was all for my imprisoned father. The triumph painted on his sly features was more than I could stand to watch, and I looked past his sneer to gaze sadly at Barac. I avoided Yithor’s empty, drooling face.

  Sawnda’at’s voice was crisp. “We hope to salvage the power of Caraat’s lineage as well as yours.” Yihtor, of course. I didn’t need to hear Barac’s curse or to see Faitlen’s taunting smile. “If the attempt is unsuccessful, Barac sud Sarc will be granted candidacy.”

  I raised my eyes to the remaining Council members and surveyed them one by one. Then I drew my eyes back to Sawnda’at. “I’d prefer the truth, Clansman, not more lies to grant you an easy conscience. Even I know Joining isn’t possible with the mindless; perhaps the Power-of-Choice can’t destroy him, but it would rebound and destroy me. If you’re changing your own laws, at least admit it.”

  A Councillor who’d been silent until now broke the heavy silence that followed my accusation. “We are indeed changing the old Prime Laws.” His voice shook, but a hint of strength underscored the words. “We intend to save your inheritance, Sira di Sarc, your progeny and their power, since, regrettably, we can no longer save you.” He gestured toward the Retian. “Baltir’s people have possessed the necessary technology for many years. He assures us he can provide a fruitful pairing.”

  I strained to move my hand. Had a finger responded? I wasn’t sure. Barac smiled at me, a resigned look-what-you’ve-got-us-into-now smile. “How fortunate for you I was able to provide you with the perfect candidate.” My voice dripped with acid. “But you’ll need more than that!”

  The necessary path was ready, I’d prepared it what seemed another lifetime ago on Acranam. I poured all of my available strength into its protection. Faitlen’s smile faded and he looked to the rest of the Council with comical dismay.

  “She prepares herself for self-death—” he began. Baltir, who had been a silent spectator, smiled, quite an impressive grimace on a face that was more than half mouth.

  “Death is no obstacle,” he said, his voice accentless and more precise than any Retian of my acquaintance. “In many ways, it makes things simpler.”

  A storm struck the interior of the chamber and sent the walls whirling away. Reality exploded into the M’hir. Reds, blacks, all the colors of rage and destruction blocked my vision. I fell to my knees as the restraint snapped. Deafened by sound more in my mind than without, I covered my head and tried to sense what was happening.

  Jarad. Somehow in the whirlpool surrounding me I felt my father as a point of force. And a focus of all other forces. A hand grasped my arm, a physical contact pulling me up and dragging me through the maelstrom. I resisted, heard Barac’s hoarse voice in my ear: “He buys us time, Cousin. Hurry.”

  How Barac knew where to go, I couldn’t imagine. Certainly vision was useless in the play of illusion and reality warping the hall and adjoining chambers. Perhaps my father guided us. Perhaps he had deliberately chosen this type of contest in order to cover our escape.

  Whatever the truth, I sobbed as I ran. Even without full memory, I knew the extent of my loss as the conflict behind us settled into an exhausted, ominous calm.

  Chapter 37

  BARAC didn’t care for our current refuge; I thought it wasn’t so bad, but kept my opinion to myself. We were in some sort of maintenance tunnel that twisted like an intestine through the depths of the complex. I liked the shiplike closeness of the walls and ceiling; the metal and oil tang to the air was comforting.

  Barac shuddered again.

  “We’ve got to keep moving.” His shields were up, but some of his desperation spilled over. I nodded and stood.

  “When can we use the M’hir?” I asked, making an effort to be helpful.

  “Not here. The Council—” Barac’s eyes were white-rimmed; his skin gleamed with sweat even though the air down here was chilled. I saw that his arrogance was gone, probably with it his confidence and faith in his own kind. The last hours had shaken loose everything he believed.

  I was much better off, having lost nothing. No, I corrected myself guiltily. I’d lost a father. “The Council may be exhausted,” Barac continued more calmly, “but there will be Watchers touching the M’hir, waiting for any disturbance or movement. Our only hope is to reach the Human portion of the building, wherever that is, and find some way through to it.” He stopped, looking a bit more like himself, and shrugged. “Actually, there’s no hope. I’d be lying to say there was.”

  “I don’t need any hope, Barac.” I tapped my fingers on a pipe, wondering how I could continue to feel this burning impatience when I was so physically and emotionally drained. “I’d be satisfied with a blaster like Morgan’s.”

  “Would Morgan himself do?” An incredibly grimy head poked out from a crawl space, the covering grate falling to the floor with a clatter. Barac said something incoherent, rushing to help the Human wriggle his way out.

  I stood, frozen with surprise as Morgan shook himself, dust flying from him in choking clouds. His hair was crowned with cobwebs. “Don’t they clean in there?” I said at last, stepping back to avoid breathing the stuff.

  “Guess not. It’s an odd system, that’s for sure,” he muttered. The dust settled. His clear blue eyes met and kept mine. “Why didn’t you say good-bye?”

  “Good-bye?” I repeated, fighting to control my temper as well as the inner darkness that had begun squirming with need at his closeness. “I’ve been trying to save your life.”

  Morgan nodded a welcome to Barac before raising a brow at me. “Who needs saving at the moment?”

  I brushed my hand over my eyes, behind the momentary blindness trying to sort out which of several conflicting feelings was closest to threatening my control. The effort was futile. I smothered them all and sat back down on the orange curl of pipe, moving my feet in time to allow one of the countless tiny cleaning servos to pass underneath. Where were rats when you needed to kick something? “I’d like to be glad to see you,” I said. “But you’ve made a terrible mistake coming here.”

  “The Council’s behind it all, Morgan,” Barac explained bitterly, a bruised look to his eyes. “Rael and I were fools to think we’d find help for Sira here. All we found was death.”

  “Death?”

  “Sira’s father bought us time to escape with his life,” Barac said when I didn’t bother answering. “But if we don’t leave Camos, now, his death will have been for nothing.”

  “All right,” Morgan said. “Let’s go, then.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I won’t leave. N
ot yet.”

  “Why?” This frantic and quick from Barac; Morgan allowed only curiosity to touch his eyes.

  “You don’t know the truth.”

  “There’s no time—”

  “It won’t take long, Barac.” I looked at Morgan, thinking each word out carefully; Barac was right, there wasn’t any time to waste. But how could I take another step without telling them, telling him, what I was? That knowledge had crusted like a scab within my mind, the kind of scab you can’t help but bump with every movement. “You’ve helped me because you think I’m the victim,” I began. “You’re wrong.”

  The pain of it burned away in me, hollowing my insides as I went on, listening to my own voice. I told them all of it, everything I’d learned from Jarad and Cenebar, everything I knew about the Council’s purpose—and Sira di Sarc’s. Barac, nervously watching the tunnel’s entrance, slowly moved back toward me until, by the time I’d finished, he stood beside Morgan and stared at me. I looked only into Morgan’s blue eyes.

  I stopped at the end, which was almost the present, and waited for Morgan’s judgment. The pain was almost gone. For that alone, it was worth whatever they now thought of me.

  “You. You planned this!?” Barac spoke first, struggling to keep a note of accusation from his voice but failing. “You used me. You planned to break the Prime Law and you used me to help!”

  Odd to defend the actions and motives of that other Sira. “Yes,” I said. “But if I hadn’t, the Council would have broken it their way—and at what consequence to me?”

  “What of the consequence to Morgan?” Part of me cowered away from Barac’s angry question; part of me echoed it. I couldn’t speak. Something flickered in Morgan’sblue eyes that I was amazed to recognize as amusement.

  “Nice to have you on my side for once, Barac.”

  Barac looked startled, then shrugged it off with a shade of his old arrogance. “Don’t get used to it, Human.” Then to me, almost with revulsion: “What I can’t believe is that you think you can justify what you tried to do—”

  “What who tried to do, Barac?” Morgan interrupted, his eyes never leaving me. “I see two Siras here. Neither has to be justified.”

  “Barac’s right. I planned—” I began, somewhat annoyed that he’d missed the point.

  Morgan raised his hand to silence me, a gentle gesture.

  “Neither one.” Morgan repeated more softly. “Sira Morgan was born on Auord and has no part in this. The other? How can we judge Sira di Sarc? How can we imagine what it was like for her in exile? Could you, Barac, have smothered your own power and self to avoid hurting others? Could you have offered to undergo the most intimate act possible between two beings with a stranger, worse, a despised alien, having no idea of the outcome?” Mind-speech, warm and rich with emotion, filled my thoughts. We can’t change the past, Sira, but we can say we’re done with it and go on. Please.

  I held myself stiff and unyielding. There was more to deal with than the past. Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Not done, after all,” he said aloud. “What else, Clanswoman?” This finally with a touch of impatience.

  “Nothing that can’t wait, Morgan.” I summoned all the earnestness I possessed. “If you can split me into different people and fates, so can I—for now. Both of me would like to survive.”

  Morgan brushed dirt from his coveralls then jerked a thumb at the small portal through which he had arrived. “I do know one tried-and-true escape route, if not where we are at the moment. From the looks of the system, whoever built this ductwork forgot it was there.” He paused. “I take it you can’t just go poof.”

  “There are guards against using the power here, Morgan.”Barac frowned. “But how did you find us without alerting the Watchers?”

  Morgan shook his head sadly, then reached up to tug at the back of Barac’s collar. “When will you listen to all my good advice, Clansman?” he chided. A tiny device shone dully between slim brown fingers.

  Barac’s astonished curse was enough to make me chuckle, but the sound was somehow harsh and I closed my lips over it. Morgan stored the device in a pocket on his belt before coming to me and reaching down a hand. I moved past it to press my face against his chest, extending my senses to encompass his breathing, the coursing of his blood, his determination, his caring. Only for a second.

  A tendril of my hair lingered on his shoulder as I drew back and waved him onward.

  Chapter 38

  “STOP kicking it in my face!” Barac’s rather frayed temper made his voice from behind me louder than was safe.

  I stopped crawling long enough to whisper: “It’s no better up here, Barac. Keep your voice down or we’ll have more to worry about.” The brightening within the duct was warning enough; we were passing another access point.

  As before, I curbed my impatience and watched the silhouette ahead. Morgan snapped off his tiny, and to be frank, rather useless light. But this time he stopped and peered cautiously through the grating. I tapped his leg. In answer, the tiny light flashed on for a second to show me a cross scratched above the metal-clad opening.

  There was a delay that gave every sore muscle in my back time to stab at me. At least my nose had stopped begging to sneeze. I didn’t bother to complain; the other two must have felt the same after our long journey on hands and knees. In one or two places, we’d had to lie flat and squirm around bends; I’d left a fair bit of skin behind. At junctions, where the sudden splitting of the duct into two or four would have left Barac and me hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, Morgan searched for his mark and led the way.

  I grinned, feeling the grime crack on my face. He might be stubborn, but my Morgan possessed some admirable and unusual skills. His past would make very interesting conversation, granted that we survived to enjoy it.

  Morgan hammered loose the finely woven grating. It fell away from the duct with a dreadful screech of sound. I squinted in the sudden light. A hand shoved at my back as Barac practically threw me after Morgan and out of the duct.

  “What do you—” I sputtered angrily at my cousin, only to burst out laughing at the gray apparition slithering out of the wall. Morgan chuckled.

  “There are some odds and ends. It’s better than walking around like this.” Morgan pointed toward one corner of the room, which was more like a closet. Barac and I had to be careful of our elbows as well as a stack of cleaning tools as we rummaged through a basket of laundry, searching for the cleanest of the dirty coveralls. Morgan slipped off his own outer gear; underneath, his dress tunic was dust-free, if somewhat rumpled.

  Moments later, and slightly cleaner, for there had been a low sink in another corner, I shook out my hair and was relieved to discover that it repelled most of the dust. Barac sneezed and glared at me. He’d put on some coveralls that more or less fit and was holding a sweeper— whether to add to his disguise or as an unlikely weapon, I wasn’t sure. Sometimes it worked. I tied on a wrap-around apron affair, trying not to notice the wads of lint clinging to my legs.

  Once out of the closet, we found ourselves walking through corridors full of people, some hurrying as though their plas notes would melt, others taking their time and chatting like birds in a tree. I had the peculiar feeling the three of us were alone, all the people around us only existing for decoration, a disguise for the reality of the Clan and its ruling Council.

  There were guards, Human, I hoped, at every junction and lift. “Was there this much security when you entered?” I asked.

  Morgan shook his head, frowning slightly. “No. And I don’t like the look of it. How many of these people are involved with the Clan, Barac?”

  “None.” Barac’s surprise seemed genuine. “On Camos, we use Humans as camouflage; what good would they be if they knew of us? You’re the only Human who knows the Council Chamber is in this building; barely a handful of your kind even know the Council exists.”

  “If you believe that, Barac, you’re a fool,” I said. “Care to bet there are Humans here who don’t remember how
deep the basement is, or how many floors they built, or where the ductwork really goes? How about the Humans in charge of climate control and ventilation? I’ll take money, Cousin, that discrepancies here are conveniently forgotten. And you know who’s best at that!”

  “I have to agree with Sira,” Morgan said, checking his chronometer. “The Clan could use these people against us—”

  Barac thumped the floor with the sweeper, attracting attention. He smiled apologetically to onlookers, who shrugged and passed by. “The Clan doesn’t need Humans to handle its problems,” he hissed.

  “Let’s hope so,” I said, sidestepping to avoid being stepped on by a preoccupied office worker. There must be thousands in the building. I could imagine them boiling over us in Clan-induced rage, like ants ripping apart crumbs. Silly notion, or was it? “How much farther to the exit—and your aircar, Morgan?”

  A gesture ahead. “That doorway leads to the main reception area.” The passage Morgan indicated was blocked by a gate, overlooked in turn by a pair of servos; even more threatening were the armed guards beyond. Morgan gave my arm a gentle shake. “Not to worry, Sira,” he whispered cheerfully. “They’re guarding against illegal entries—not exits.”

  “Then how did you get in?” Barac growled pointedly, dropping his sweeper behind a nearby planter and dusting his clothes once more. Morgan just smiled and led the way confidently. There was no choice but to trust his judgment, something I was sure Barac disliked intensely.

  The moment we stepped between the servos, a soft bell rang, instantly making us the focus of attention. I was unpleasantly aware of the odd trio we formed. Morgan forestalled the approach of the guards by reaching into a pocket and drawing forth a striped card for the servos’ inspection. A series of satisfied clicks and the gate opened.