Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “Go ahead, Esippet.” An annoyingly awake Paul poked me in exactly the spot where the suit chafed my antennae. “Your frisky friends are buckled in anyway.”

  I knew that, having been fascinated by the efforts of the slower-moving Prumbins to net and tie down the cavorting Oietae nearby. It hadn’t taken them long—something, I thought, that implied a disquieting skill at fishing.

  Perhaps the Human sensed my hesitation. More likely, I told myself much later, he’d learned to distrust my desire to stay inside what could be a self-serve bar.

  Regardless, I was as shocked as the Prumbin when Paul reached over and hit the auto-release on my suit. I hadn’t realized there was such a dreadfully unsafe control within reach of others. As alarms went off, mine as well as the suit’s, I started composing a letter of complaint to the manufacturer, along with dire plans for my so-helpful friend.

  Then, the sea herself entered my gills.

  I remember this, I realized with urgent joy, pushing and squirming my way out, as this form would have freed its way from the confines of its egg. Information flooded my senses: the Busfish, our neighbors in its mouth, the steady current of replacement ocean flowing between gaps in its lips, the rush of oxygen toward its gills—passing mine first.

  And fresh food. The suit may have sustained me, but nothing compared to the way the constant flutter of my swimmerets and arm combs pushed the life-rich ocean through the fine hairs lining my mandibles, the way tasty, tiny morsels collected there, the way my mandibles automatically swept this harvest into my mouth.

  There was something to be said for eating at all times, I decided, blissfully amber, even as I continued to struggle from the suit.

  But the instant every limb was free, something grabbed my lowermost appendages and hauled me backward. I struggled helplessly as a net imprisoned my newly outstretched antennae.

  In final insult, the other Oietae were laughing at me, bodies bright yellow. The vibrations they sent tickled my entire surface, let alone my tympana.

  Not only their vibrations. Paul was trying to say something using the external speaker on his suit. Sound traveled exceedingly well through water—even random noise, which was about all I could gather from his Human sounds. I worked my antennae through holes in the netting before aiming my oculars at him. The noise stopped as Paul doubtless remembered that without my suit, my tympana couldn’t translate his vocalizations into understandable speech.

  Twenty-three pairs of appendages allowed me to shrug expressively and with just a touch of satisfaction. This wasn’t my fault. Then I relented and flashed a calm, forgiving blue, the true color, no longer approximated by technology.

  In answer, my perceptive Human held up his thumb.

  His wasn’t the only reassurance. True speech, bubbling with laughter, played along my sensitive membranes ::Won’t be long, Too-Young::

  I was unsure if the older Oieta meant my maturation time or our mutual wait to be released from net and mouth. It might have been both. This was a species fond of double meanings.

  Playing it safe, I answered with the courtesy due an elder ::I value your counsel, Old-Enough-for-Joy:: The appellation was required and appropriate; I blushed anyway, feeling the stripe of green flaring down my dorsal surface.

  More laughter from all three, but kind. They’d been netted into a happy mass of limbs, antennae, and segmented body parts. If I hadn’t known there were three, I’d have estimated more—or less—individuals. One was expected to acknowledge such a tight group. ::Greetings, Joyous-Ones,:: I vibrated, settling into a chaste if envious amber in contrast to their glowing orange. ::I am Esippet Darnelli Swashbuckly. My Soft Companion is Paul Gast::

  This was, I thought, the cleverest part of my planning thus far. Oietae preferred to travel with a Soft Companion, if they could afford it: a nonaquatic someone to stand in line-ups, handle luggage, and look after the myriad tasks that being in a suit made awkward, if not dangerous for the species on land. Humans were most commonly hired, being adaptable and about the same body mass. The latter was a practical concern, since shared seating was more economical. There was, of course, certain status gained by traveling with more challenging species, as exemplified by the brief trendiness of Ganthor as Soft Companions. Since the only solitary Ganthor were rutting males or insane, such partnerships had cut short several tourist excursions.

  The Oietae’s names arrived as nonsense, confused by interfering currents as all the Prumbins began lifting braces into position around the tongue at once. I felt another laugh, then, more clearly: ::Well met, Swashbuckly! Our Soft Companions left our service when the starship docked.:: A tint of pink on all three—remembered annoyance. I imagined they’d flashed quite another color on being abandoned mid-vacation. ::The tour guide arranged this one. She is called—:: a pause during which body parts were rearranged. I hoped they were conversing. ::She is called Wendy Cheatham.:: Three antennae merged to point at a hunched figure on the opposite platform, seated slightly apart from what I took to be a family of three, probably also Human given the attention paid to the smallest member throughout the journey. ::Would you care to trade? Yours seems more fun. Ours hasn’t moved since the mouth shut. Dull, dull, dull::

  Fun? Given the frenzied activity of this group throughout the trip—and the work looking after not one, but three Oietae entailed? Unlikely they’d have noticed if their Soft Companion expired from exhaustion, although I hoped the Prumbin attendant would. I gave their poor Human a glance of sympathy and resolved to be nicer to Paul.

  ::Maybe another time, Joyous-Ones:: I told them.

  ::There’s time at the Abyss! No one should ever miss ...:: This being only the first lines of a long and bawdy song, I resigned myself to having to feel the entire thing, sung in an enthusiastic three-part harmony, interspersed with giggles. Elder Oietae were notoriously fond of embarrassing younger ones in public.

  As if to spare my tender tympana from such abuse, the Prumbins chose that moment to begin ramming their braces into the roof, a clear sign that we’d arrived at the Nirvana Abyss and the Busfish was about to open its mouth.

  So we weren’t to be Busfish entrées, I sighed happily to myself, twitching my freed antennae, glowing amber.

  It hadn’t been a completely rational fear, but which ones are?

  Otherwhere

  “DID you fear my people were thieves and murderers, Hom Leslie?”

  As this neatly summed up Rudy’s initial assessment of the black-garbed figures who’d ambushed him, and his likely fate at their hands, he grinned. “Something like that. More wine, Sybil?”

  “Please.” The Human female sitting across the table held her refilled glass closer to the candle, her eyes squinting as she examined the color. “An engaging Merlot, wouldn’t you agree? A touch—rustic—but with promise. Such a shame.”

  Rudy raised his own glass and took a careless swallow. He’d recognized the bottle: a match for the few remaining in the Largas’ cellar—the treasured final vintage from Garson’s World. The former patroller refused to ask if his tablemate spoke not of the wine, but its source.

  A Kraal game within a game. He played it to the hilt, having no other option. Kraal left the cradle knowing survival and success depended on affiliation, and affiliations were forged by actions taken in secret, using every advantage to elevate those stronger or bring down those weaker. Professional paranoids, with a fondness for vendetta and assassination, they were most deadly if exposed, but unpredictably dangerous at all times.

  Those who’d waited in ambush for him had been courteous but firm, saying only that his presence was requested. Rudy had hardly been in a position to refuse.

  In truth, he was curious. “Sybil. An unusual name, is it not?” And the only one she’d offered since he arrived.

  They’d brought him here, to a darkened room of astonishing luxury, considering they’d only gone up three floors within the Casselman. He’d entered on carpeting that rippled beneath his feet, inhaled the scent of half-seen flowers
, imagined rich furnishings barely catching the light. That light had come solely from a candle in the mouth of a jewel-eyed reptile, rearing in surprise from the center of a table set with a platter of delicate appetizers and a pair of tall, crystal glasses. A chair had waited for him, across from this woman. The guards had left them alone.

  By the whisper of lines at mouth and eyes, Sybil could be old enough to be his grandmother, yet sat as straight and strong as any of her guards. Hers, for Rudy had no doubt this was their commander, despite the heavy veils of flame-red and silver covering her from head to toe. Only her face, throat, and hands were exposed to view, their surface a maze of white tattooing on dark skin, a bewilderingly complex record of affiliations and loyalties, both hers and those she could claim. A person of power and influence, among the Kraal.

  And as such, completely untrustworthy, Rudy reminded himself.

  “Sybil was once a name of great favor in the lineage of he who sired my mother’s mother,” Sybil answered readily enough. “I use it when it pleases me. And your name, Hom Leslie. One you use when it pleases you?”

  They hadn’t disarmed him. They hadn’t touched him or searched his bag. But Rudy was under no illusions his concealed weaponry would do him any good here. Old or young, a Kraal noble like Sybil needed no line of guards to protect her. Had she dismissed them for privacy or sent her guards to kidnap her next guest? He bowed slightly, conceding what they both knew. “Rudy Leslie Lefebvre, at your service.”

  Her lips thinned in a smile. “Captain, was it not? Under the Famous Fool.”

  “Under Project Leader Lionel Kearn,” he countered, matching her smile. Never diminish your affiliations in front of a Kraal.

  “Kearn,” she echoed, dark eyes reflecting the candle’s flame. “How fares Kearn’s quest, former Captain Lefebvre? Has he found his Monster?”

  Rudy put down his wineglass, acknowledging the end of courtesies. A Kraal in a hurry, he decided. The table loaded with the food and drink—“essentials” of polite Kraal discourse, as well as a mutually convenient way to administer poison—had lent an appearance of normalcy to their conversation, but Rudy was willing to bet it was intended for her guards, not him. He doubted she’d expect him to feel alarmed by her failure to provide a second round of food and drink before moving on to their business, or be insulted by the use of wine, regardless of pedigree, instead of ceremonial serpitay.

  Of course, he wasn’t Kraal, to be treated as such. Or Sybil wasn’t in the mood to be polite. Either, he reassured himself, were more logical reasons to be abrupt than a need to question him before he died of some offering at her table. He hoped.

  “I don’t keep in touch with my former shipmates, or Kearn,” Rudy informed her, glad his voice was steady. “Nor was I convinced by incredible stories of a shapeshifting creature. I was captain of the Russell III, nothing more.”

  “Really?” Another glint from those otherwise expressionless eyes. The eyes of a killer, Rudy judged, or of someone who ordered murder without compunction. “What I’ve learned of you suggests a great deal more, Rudy. May I call you Rudy? You have an unusual range of skills for a simple starship captain, some better suited to the other side of those laws you once protected. Burrowing within walls, for one.”

  So Cristoffen’s meeting with Zoltan had been a trap for him as well. Rudy accepted the premise, controlling his anger, knowing the fear at its core: had they detected him or had he been followed? The former? He’d better seriously brush up on his technique before spying on anyone with Kraal tech. The latter? Rudy went cold. Had he made a mistake that exposed Esen and Paul? Perhaps even been responsible in some way for their disappearance from Minas XII?

  One thing he saw as clearly as if written in the tattoos masking the Kraal’s face. If he failed to impress her, or gave any wrong answer, he wouldn’t survive. They might let him leave this room, but she would have placed a precautionary poison in the wine, or along the rim of the glass, or in the lightly scented smoke drifting between them. The jeweled eyes of the lizard shone red.

  With a nonchalance that made his stomach twist with effort, Rudy leaned back and smiled. “Let’s say I can do what needs to be done without attracting attention. Unlike some.”

  “A laudable quality.” Sybil pursed her thin lips. “Among many. Still, I have heard the strangest thing about you. You have a reputation as an honest being. Surely your former employers knew better.”

  This, from a member of a race that rewarded deception? Rudy shrugged, giving her his best grin. “Former employers,” he said, emphasizing the first word.

  “Ah.” A satisfied sound. “Then you are available to take a contract?”

  Rudy fought to keep his face unchanged, although this was hardly what he’d expected. Another trap? “I wasn’t aware Kraal hired outside their affiliation.”

  If the shift in tattoos near her eyes could be taken as clues to her expression, Rudy thought Sybil looked smug. “We prefer that others believe so,” she said calmly. “It keeps away unsought solicitations.” Fabric hissed as her arm stretched toward him, her hand, pressed flat to the table, coming to rest close enough to touch. She kept it there while looking straight into his eyes. “If wealth matters to you, Rudy Lefebvre, fulfilling this contract for me will bring you all you could require for a new life. If affiliation matters, success will bring you within the orbit of my House.” Her lips twisted. Amusement. “Which may or may not survive that success, but we take our turns on Fate’s Rack.”

  Her hand, more shadow than flesh, lifted. Beneath it lay a blade. Its ornate etching fractured the candlelight into lines of twisting flame. The hilt was carved as well, in designs so intricate that the eye was initially fooled into judging them simple. The knife was too large to have been concealed beneath her hand. Yet here it was. The impossible made real.

  In more ways than one, Rudy thought. A knife had been a gift to Kearn from his mysterious Kraal backer, the same backer who had urged Kearn to keep hunting Esen and Paul all those years, feeding him information that kept the hunt alive. When Kearn had had enough of the Kraal, he’d given the knife to Rudy. Timri had found a tracking device hidden in its hilt and destroyed the weapon.

  Twin to one now pointing at his heart.

  14: Brim Night

  IN common with most creatures domesticated and trained as beasts of burden, a Busfish possessed an exquisitely-tuned ability to sense when the end of its labors drew near. The calmest, most disciplined Busfish would make its final approach to Nirvana as though pursued by a school of famished Gigamouths. Younger individuals had been known to crash right through their docking yokes and head to the stable without pausing to disgorge passengers at all.

  Rather than fight this instinct, had it been remotely feasible to do so, the Prumbins took the safer course of protecting their charges—hence the securing of loose passengers and their belongings in case of collision. They’d also come to grips with the reality of having the Busfish carry what would otherwise be lunch in its mouth. A Busfish wouldn’t snap and swallow while it swam, but once stopped, and the mouth open, the reflex was occasionally irresistible—hence the braces to prevent complete and regrettable closure.

  I hadn’t bothered telling Paul about the early days of Busfish travel. It wasn’t dishonesty so much as what Ersh used to call “appropriate timing,” something that had applied regularly to my own education. After leaving the ’fish, I could show my Human the Prumbin monument to those gobbled on duty.

  The other aspect of working with living things was offering them gratification. Since nibbling snacks was out of the question, the Prumbins had decided to allow the Busfish to spit. This likely had a great deal to do with the difficulty of training any creature not to violently rid its mouth of inedible debris, but the Prumbins preferred to believe the Busfish enjoyed the process.

  I certainly did.

  When I felt the inflow through the lips slow and stop, I nudged Paul with an antenna, lacking any other way to prepare him. Any moment now, water w
ould surge back up the throat, propelled by gill flaps and stomach muscle—gill flaps three times taller than Paul and a stomach typically fifteen times the volume of the mouth. Five Prumbins, roped together, were standing by the lips, ready to be disgorged first. From the casual way they stood talking to one another, I assumed they were old hands and inured to the process.

  I, on the other hand, flared almost orange with anticipation.

  Paul turned to aim his begoggled eyes at me. I was quite sure the ensuing series of muddied vibrations I felt coming from him was a variant of: “Is there something you aren’t telling me, Es?” He often asked such a question, even when he knew the answer was yes.

  I waved my arms cheerfully, as best I could within their fastenings, then mimed holding on tight. Appropriate timing, indeed, I thought, as what felt like a wall of Busfish-flavored ocean tried to expel us out the now gaping mouth.

  I extended all my appendages to enjoy the flow and became completely orange.

  What a rush!

  The Prumbins released us in time to join the third group spat out by the Busfish. I’d hoped to be last, but there was no point in being greedy. It was a quick, tumultuous exit, ending in a sudden stop as nets ensured we’d stay safely within the yoke instead of zooming out over the Abyss. The stop left a minor dent in the sleeve of one of my lowermost segments. Paul didn’t make any unusual sounds, such as yelling, which might have implied a connection between my dent and the new one on his helmet.

  Dents aside, it had been fun. Well, I knew one of us thought so.

  Our net swung down and away from the mouth as another rose to take its place, a wise precaution so subsequent mouthfuls of passengers wouldn’t be plastered over the previous ones. One set of Prumbin attendants freed us from the mesh, then others pushed us toward the nearest of the funnel-mouthed corridors leading away from the yoke. It wasn’t necessary to swim; suction within the corridors produced currents to sweep us away, timed so passengers from our Busfish didn’t collide with those from others.