by Sarah Zettel
“Can't.” Arron was already on his feet, rummaging through the open cupboards around the dining area. “I've got to do something.”
Lynn didn't say anything. Exhaustion bit hard into her bones. She fumbled in her pocket for one of the bean pods and looked at it without interest. She heard something ripping in the background. She ran a thumbnail around the pod's seam and split it open. The beans inside were kidney-shaped and dark, rich green.
I'm the one who likes real grown-in-the-dirt food, she reminded herself.
Trying not to grimace, she popped one in her mouth and chewed. It tasted thick, dry, and green. Better than nothing,right? She finished the other four beans in the pod. By the fourth one, it didn't taste so bad.
“What's for dinner?” Arron sat on her seeing side. He had a wad of black-and-brown cloth in his hands. He set it down. Some of it was rags, but underneath them was a loose, brown tunic that he must have found in one of the cupboards.
“Beans and more beans.” Lynn emptied her pockets, spilling pods onto the cushion.
“Better than nothing, right?” Arron made a come-here gesture. She turned her face toward him. She felt him swabbing gently at her face with the rough, dry cloth.
“I sure hope so.”
They fell silent. Lynn wanted to say something. There was so much they needed to talk about. He'd saved them, several times now. She needed to say something about that. Then, they had to plan. They had to figure out what to do when the ovrth came back, and what to do if they didn't, or if Res got sick overnight, or …
But there was nothing to plan with. They had no idea where anybody was, or what was going on around them, or up above them. They knew nothing, nothing at all.
Lynn's hands started to shake. Nothing …
“Lynn? What's wrong?”
My hands are shaking, that's what's wrong. I'm half-blind and rotting and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!
Tears ran down her face. Deep, sick sobs dragged themselves out of her chest. Her hands shook, her chin shook, her whole torso shook with fear, exhaustion, and ignorance.
“Lynn? Lynn, come on, stop. It'll be okay.” Awkward arms embraced her. “The ovrth won't let us down, and Resaime's not that bad off … Lynn …” The pitch of his voice raised toward panic. “Come on, Lynn. We will be okay. We are okay … Don't do this to me, Lynn. I need … Please, stop …”
Lynn gasped for breath between the sobs. She held up both trembling hands. “I'll be … I'll be okay.” One deep breath. Another. A long, ragged breath. The trembling eased, and she was able to gulp down some of the tears.
“I'm sorry.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears and mucus across her face. Arron pressed a cloth into her hand and she held it against her cheeks. “I'm sorry.”
“ ’Sokay,” said Arron softly. “It's been an unbelievable day.”
“Yeah, that it has.” She crumpled the damp cloth in her hands. “Look, get me covered up, will you? Before Resaime comes down to find out what that god-awful noise was and sees me like this.”
Without another word, Arron picked up the rest of his cloths. He wiped down her face and pressed a new pad against her eye socket, binding it in place with long strips wrapped around her whole head. “There, that'll help.”
“Thanks. Have a bean.” She held out a pod to him.
“Thanks. The Getesaph call these chkith. They make great soup.” He split the pod open and, without any hesitation at all, popped the beans into his mouth.
They sat there on the divan, munching beans, putting the pods in a neat pile, and saying nothing. Lynn's memory flooded with all the meals they'd shared in college, all of them over endless conversations that had seemed so important at the time. Now, when it was truly important, when it was life and death, she didn't want to say anything at all.
The room grew steadily darker. Arron looked into the thickening twilight. “I didn't find anything to light a fire with,” he said. “We might as well get some sleep.” He stood up and gathered the discarded pods in a double handful. Then he walked to the stove and shoved them into the firebox.
Lynn picked up the tunic in both hands. It was damp. Black-and-grey mold speckled its surface. It smelled. She bit her lip and pulled it over her head. She couldn't travel in rags. The suit was going to fad off by tomorrow, and her shirt wasn't far behind.
Then, despite her protesting joints, she teetered over to the spiral stairway. “Res! Are you good?”
“Yes!”
She pounded the wad softly with her fist. “I'm taking your word on that!”
“Thank you!”
Lynn turned and settled back down on her divan. The moldy smell hung thick in the air. In the deepening shadows, she saw Arron right a curved sofa and toss its half-shredded cushion back in place.
“ ’Night, Lynn.” He lay down.
“ ’Night.” She curled up, huddling in on herself and at the same time willing herself to relax.
A small strange part of her remembered the feeling of Arron's arms around her and missed it. Another part thought of David, and she almost started crying again.
When sleep came, she accepted it as a blessing.
The Inner Office of the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead was full of Byvant's selected audience when the speaker-guard brought in two of the Members Shavck, Vreaith and Pem. Ishth had the satisfaction of seeing them glance nervously around the room, taking in the witnesses. Four sisters from the upper house, four from the lower, and two complete families from the Defenders’ House that they could still count on, not to mention all the usual clerical staff, special advisors, official recorders, and a pair of journalist sisters with their noters. They were not under any circumstances going to be allowed to take their pictures or notes out of the room, but they added a nice touch.
She and Byvant had bluffed their way through another Confederation session today, but, judging from the tones even their allies were using, they wouldn't make it through a third. Disturbing rumors were running about what the t'Therians were doing in their peninsula. If anything happened, it was going to be important to appear cooperative and blameless. Byvant had agreed firmly. So, late at is was, they had staged this little scene.
The Members Shavck both dressed in very bad taste for a pair of sisters who were supposed to be enacting the business of the people. Vreaith wore a thin, shiny black tunic that hung down to her knees, and the mottled pink hose might as well have been an additional layer of skin. Pem's belted kilt and jacket were a little better, but the yellow and grey were very close to the gold and silver reserved for the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead, and Ishth couldn't help wondering if that was on purpose.
The speaker-guard locked the door and took up their stations; two on either side of the entrance. The next thing Pem and Vreaith noticed was that there was nowhere for them to sit down.
Ishth and Byvant had agreed ahead of time that Byvant should start, and they had also agreed that all polite preliminaries should be dispensed with.
“Where are they?” asked Byvant.
Pem started so badly she almost backed into her sister. Vreaith laid a warning hand on her shoulder.
“Where are who, Rchilthen Byvant?”
Ishth let herself look weary. “Your people abducted two Humans and two devna. Where are they?”
One of the Parliamentarians coughed. One of the journalists lifted her noter a little higher. Vreaith smoothed her ridiculous black-satin blouse down.
It's practically a robe. Who does she think she is? One of the devna Queens?
“There has been a misunderstanding,” Pem said.
“On which point?” Ishth dropped her ears back just a fraction. “On the fact that you and your sisters should be brought up on charges of treason, stripped of office, and bled to death for embarrassing your mothers and sisters in front of the Confederation? Or in identifying exactly whose hands took hold of the Humans who came here at our insistence to help us?
“Or as to what kind of clemency could possibly be offere
d if you give us a quick answer here and now?”
Do we all understand each other now?
Pem's lips twitched like she wanted to bare her teeth. “If all this is true, why are we and our sisters not under arrest?”
“Because we don't have time.” Byvant's lame ear quivered violently. “We need an answer for the Confederation and the Humans. We decided to start the questioning with you. The trials will come later. The evidence for your arrest has been distributed to your sister-members.” She flicked her good ear toward the silent audience. “There is clemency for whoever tells us what we need. As we said, we are starting with you.”
“And if we choose not to agree to this patently illegal and unfounded request?” asked Vreaith.
She gets full credit for calm, thought Ishth.
“Then you leave,” she said aloud, “and wait for the police and the warrants in whatever fashion you choose. We, meanwhile, send for the next sisters on our list.”
Vreaith looked at Pem, and Pem looked back at Vreaith. Vreaith smoothed her tunic over her pouch. Pem took her sister's hand. Ishth felt her skin bunch and bubble across her back.
Vreaith sucked in a deep breath. “They were being held forty-five miles outside of Mrant Chavan. The mother devna died during debriefing. The daughter and the two Humans have since escaped.”
A tide of incredulous murmuring rushed through the room. Ishth waited for it to fade to a background whisper.
“Escaped?” Ishth gestured for Vreaith to go on.
“They killed two sisters to get out,” said Vreaith flatly.
The whisper erupted into a cacophony of shouts. Sisters jumped to their feet. Ears and hands flapped wildly. The journalists tried to point their noters in six directions at once.
Byvant climbed to her feet and drew herself up to her full height. “Sisters! Please!” she bellowed. Silence descended like a heavy blanket over the room.
Very good, Sister, thought Ishth. Now, salvage this. Please.
“The Humans and the devna killed two of our sister-defenders?” said Byvant with perfect calm. “And who sent them out to die? Who held the Humans until they had to escape? To whose names do those deaths ready go, Citizen Sisters? Who ready owes their families for their lives?”
The shouts changed pitch and direction and the hand-and-ear-waving grew less. Byvant glanced down at Ishth. Ishth dipped her ears in approval.
Vreaith's face tightened up. She had evidently counted on that news to shock the whole room into confusion. Which went to show that she not only had no taste in clothes, she had no real understanding of how good Byvant was.
Ishth lowered her ears a little closer to her scalp. “Do you have any idea where your prisoners escaped to?”
Pem's ears sagged. There was no escaping the fact that Byvant's few words had swung the room against them again.
“We assume they are heading for the Human outpost near Mrant Chavan.”
“And there are more sisters sent to intercept?” prompted Ishth.
“They may have them by now.”
Ishth dipped her ears. “Good. It will be that much more convenient for you to escort them to the Human outpost.”
A look of incredulity flickered through Vreaith's eyes.
“Understand me clearly,” said Ishth. “The Humans are already scouring the Hundred Isles for their missing sisters. They can either find them soon, or they can continue to search for whatever they can find. Which may include the truth of what your sisters aboard the Ur are planning. What do you think the Humans will do if they find that?”
Now, what are you going to do? Are you nervous enough to give it all up now, or are you going to try to buy time for your sisters aboard the Ur?
Pem dropped her gaze to the floor. “We'll have to send some messages to find out what the situation is.”
Buying time. Good. You'll buy it for us, too. As long as the Humans think we can't manage for ourselves, they'll be willing to take you on for us.
And when you must die, it is not we who kill you.
Chapter XIV
Commander Keale, wake up! Commander Keale, wake up!”
Keale surfaced slowly from sleep. It took a minute to realize be was being bailed by the room voice.
“Commander Keale, wake up!”
“Room voice, what's the emergency?” Keale knuckled his eyes. “Lights!”
The lights rose, just a little, to give his eyes time to adjust, and the voice answered, “A priority red call is on your comm station.”
The words jolted Keale fully awake. He scrambled out of the sheets and snatched a pair of shorts off the bedside chair.
“Room voice, open comm station. I'm coming!” he called to the station as he yanked the shorts on.
The lights came up to full. Keale hurried out of the bedroom and into his spartan living room. The main comm station was alive and Lieutenant Ryan's face looked anxiously out at him from the screen.
“What is it?” Keale dropped into the station chair. Ryan was tousled and rumpled. Whatever he'd been doing, it wasn't sleeping.
“We've got trouble,” Ryan answered. “We got this from a pilot who was flying back to base late after doing a pass over Vshlanl and Prentanl Islands.”
Ryan's face blanked out and was replaced by a green-and-brown blur of woods and fields, punctuated by towns and homesteads. Then, in a clump of trees, an unexpected glint caught the light.
“What's that?” asked Keale.
“That's what the pilot wondered,” said Ryan's voice from behind the scene. “He went back for another look.” The ground tilted and rotated as the pilot banked his craft and angled his flight path over whatever in the grove was catching the light.
The plane flew over, the cameras looked down, and showed a tubular construction topped with a shining lens.
“A telescope?” Keale scratched his chin. “What are the Getesaph doing with a telescope so close to the port?”
“I went in and asked.” The flyover video cut out and Keale faced Ryan again. “There were five soldiers that we saw: a couple trindt, and three ivrth.” Captains and engineers, Keale translated mentally. Ryan's face was replaced by a new scene. This was a square room, small by Getesaph standards. It looked like one of the white, prefab buildings they were so good at putting up at a moment's notice. Two uniformed Getesaph with the trindt's red bands on their cuffs stood in front of whoever's eyes had made this recording.
The Getesaph were talking, but Ryan hadn't turned up the sound. “They gave us a story about using the ’scope to watch the shuttles. To make sure everything was going to and coming from where it was supposed to.” Reasonable, thought Keale. Dedelphi paranoia made him look positively lackadaisical.
“They showed me the ’scope.” The video jumped straight to a close-up look at the telescope and its turret and cables running off its sides like black vines. “I asked a few questions and left, and took this recording to Jasper over in comm tech.”
Ryan appeared again. “She ran the scraps together, looked at the angle, and the fact that the place was well manned, personed, whatever, on a day when there aren't any flights planned, and came up with another possible use.” Ryan took a deep breath. “It seems that ’scope is in the exact right place for getting the backscatter of communications transmissions off the clouds.”
The sentence sank into Keale's mind and translated itself. “They've tapped our communications?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grim satisfaction flowed through Keale. “All right, knot up what you've got and get it to me. I'm going to wake up Veep Brador, and then I'm going to wake up the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead and—”
“Sir?” interrupted Ryan. “That's not the real problem. The real problem is that Jasper's team also figured out why Hagopian was looking at the passenger manifest.”
Keale froze. “Go on.”
“Jasper's team has also been going through the port tapes, listening to conversations, watching personnel registration, matching faces with names an
d movements.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair, making yet more of it stand on end. “What she found was that the names people were calling each other in the hallways and with their families did not always match the names they entered for the register.”
“Who have we got up there?” asked Keale softly.
“Jasper thinks it's a boatload of soldiers.”
Any satisfaction Keale felt drained down to the soles of his feet. “Oh, Christ,” he whispered. His mind reeled and righted itself. “All right, Ryan, this is an emergency order. The Hundred Isles and t'Aori peninsula are to be evacuated of all Human personnel. Immediately.”
“Wh—”
“Because whatever the Getesaph are doing up there, it's going to be aimed at the t'Therians, and if the t'Therians get wind of it, they'll attack the Getesaph and all hell's going to break loose like nothing we've ever seen. Get our people out of there. Now.”
“Yes, sir.” He still hesitated. “What about Nussbaumer and Hagopian?”
Keale shook his head. “We're going to have to put the planes on evac duty. Everybody should keep an eye out for them, but evacuation of the outposts and ports is now top priority.”
For a moment Ryan forgot his title. “Brador's going to chew your ass off and spit it out.”
“It's my ass,” said Keale dismissively. “Get going. I've got to get hold of Captain Esmaraude.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryan cut his thread and the screen blanked out.
“Room voice, emergency call to Captain Elisabeth Esmaraude aboard the Ur. Security override all other communications and secure the thread.” Haul her out of bed, voice. She's the one in real trouble.
“Completing request.”
Keale couldn't sit still. He got up and paced back and forth in front of the terminal. Come on, Esmo. Come on. The carpet felt soft and warm under his callused feet. His hands started to ache from how tightly his fists clenched.
The evacuation was going to cause a scene down there. Maybe not panic, but one hell of a general confusion, especially in the Getesaph port where everyone was sitting around waiting for something to happen. Ryan was right. Brador was going to have his ass over this. Which was why he was waiting to call Brador last. He had to get everything else in motion. Then, he'd find a way to explain to a veep whose own ass depended on schedules and calm that if they didn't create a little Holy Hell now, it was going to get a lot worse later. People, Human and Dedelphi, were going to get killed.