Although I knew enough about this particular Human to realize it couldn’t be avoided forever.
Otherwhere
“WHEN were you going to tell me?”
Kearn blinked at the onslaught of light as much as at the low, angry voice. “Timri? Tell you what?” He levered himself on his elbow and squinted reproachfully at his door. Which seemed, he sighed, only effectively locked when he was outside and had forgotten the latest code.
She was crouched at the side of his bed, hands gripping the blankets as though planning to toss them—and him—out an air lock. “About Cristoffen working with the Kraal.”
He laid back and closed his eyes. Of course, she’d overheard. They maintained a polite fiction on board the Russell III, one in which he was in command and no one spied on his every move. He must, Kearn supposed, hold up his end. Or things would change. He didn’t like change. “How did you know?”
“You gave me that report to read. Didn’t you think I’d figure it out? He had to be using their stinking tech.” Smooth and without hesitation. Years of practice, he thought. The mattress shifted violently. “Don’t you think of going back to sleep on me, Lionel. I’m not leaving until we talk about this.”
“I know.” Kearn opened his eyes to gaze up at his comp-tech and second-in-command. He almost smiled, which wouldn’t have helped her temper. But her fine-boned face—with its high glowing cheeks and elongated eyes, expressive mouth and rich dark skin— had become endlessly fascinating to him, whether impatient, puzzled, or, most typically, completely unaware of him. Even when brimming with fury at him, he decided, it was a face worth watching.
Timri gave him room to slide out of bed and stand. Kearn pulled a robe over his shoulders and tied it around his waist—not that she’d notice if he’d been naked.
“Brandy?” he asked, heading for the cupboard. Taking silence for a no, he poured himself a small glass, pausing to stare into the amber liquid and remember another late night visit. Then, he’d been the one seeking answers. Now? “I don’t know all the answers,” Kearn said evenly, turning to face Timri. “But you’re right. He admitted it to me yesterday, when we discussed his report.”
She sat on the end of his bed, hands precisely folded together on her lap, fury replaced by something darker. “What are we going to do about it?”
Action was her way, he thought, knowing it wasn’t his. His strength, if he had one, was patience, the ability to keep his goal in view for a lifetime if necessary. Kearn took a swallow, feeling the smooth burn of the liquor down his throat, the warmth in his stomach. He’d learned not to cough. “Do you have a suggestion?” As Timri leaned forward eagerly, he held up a hand. “A suggestion that won’t alert the Kraal or involve Cristoffen’s disappearance.”
Her lips twisted as if on something sour. “He killed Zoltan Duda.”
“You’re sure. You finished your analysis—”
She snorted. “Didn’t take long. The Port Jellies on Urgia Prime came to the very convenient conclusion that Duda’s weapon misfired in a robbery attempt. Case closed. Oh, they’d like to talk to the intended victim, but they respect that being’s right to private commerce. So they won’t be looking.”
“But you don’t think it was a misfire.”
“According to the technical evidence in the report? Not a chance. Incompetent fools or well-paid ones, makes no difference. That weapon fired properly—then every bit of its energy was reflected back at Duda. You know what that means. Cristoffen must have been wearing a shield. A very special one.”
Kearn took another, larger swallow. “So, it was self-defense.”
“I’m not absolving the dead,” Timri countered. “They both intended murder that day. But you can’t call it self-defense simply because Cristoffen succeeded.”
“No.” Kearn sank into a chair, careful not to disturb the stack of abstracts he’d left on the arm last night, reading material that wasn’t about death. “I believe Cristoffen went into that room knowing he’d survive and Zoltan Duda would die. Something we’ll never be able to prove.”
“What are we going to do?” Timri repeated. “Don’t you tell me to wait while Cristoffen meets his next victim—did you know he’s set us on course for Picco’s Moon already? That dolt of a captain didn’t so much as blink.”
“I didn’t know,” Kearn admitted. “But I’m not surprised.” Fourth down on Cristoffen’s list, he thought. Alphonsus Lundrigan.
They were close enough that Timri could rest her hand on Kearn’s knee. “Lionel. I’ve never pried into your—dealings—with the Kraal. I’ve never asked about that time. But—do you think they ordered Zoltan’s death? Were you ever told to-to—”
“Kill someone for them? No!” Kearn shoved his chair back to stand and move away, his reports tumbling to the floor in protest. Timri stood also, forcing him to look up to meet her level gaze.
“We all have secrets,” she said, her voice harsher than he’d ever heard. “We’re all capable of terrible things.”
Kearn stiffened. “You think I’m capable of murder?”
“Did you think it of Cristoffen, before you gave him virtual control of this ship?”
“He wasn’t my friend.”
His unthought protest, half wish and half plea, hung between them. Kearn sat back down and poured himself another drink, pretending he hadn’t seen her sudden confusion, pretending she couldn’t see how his hand shook. “We’ll go to Picco’s Moon,” he told the glass. “But not directly. Relay my order to Captain What’s-his-name to take us to Sacriss XIII first. If he objects, tell him I want to exchange information with the local universities. Buys us time.”
Very quietly. “Time for what, sir?”
“Time for you to send tracers through the logs of Cristoffen’s communications since coming aboard. Use my authorization code and go deep.”
“What about his comp? I could get into his files. He’d never know—”
“No,” Kearn said firmly, hiding his panic at the mere thought of her being more involved. “His ‘friends’ are very careful, even if he’s not. Stay clear. But make up some excuse to keep Cristoffen from sending any new messages—wreck the com system if you must. I’m sure Resdick would be glad to help. He’s been bored lately.”
“Lionel. What I said. I was only—”
Kearn didn’t look up. “I don’t trust any translight com from this ship, my office, or the bridge, not with Kraal involved. When we reach Sacriss, I’ll need access to a secure system there, no questions asked.” A long pause. Kearn waited until he heard her indrawn breath, then added: “I know you can arrange such things, Timri. I know you have your own ‘friends’ and resources.”
He cradled his glass in both hands, refusing to rub his scalp, refusing to learn what expression filled the face he so loved to watch. “I’m only a fool sometimes.”
“I—”
“Dismissed.”
15: Abyss Afternoon; Happy House Night
“I TOLD you. I really don’t care where we stay, Es, as long as I’m out of this as soon as possible.” Paul was either gritting his teeth or one of our coms had some static. The “this” to which he referred was his suit. It wasn’t the quality of the Prumbin garment that so perturbed my Human. He appeared to have reached some limit of tolerance for his own odor—or his suit’s air scrubber had given up. Though a peaceful being, I was reasonably sure he entertained thoughts of violence if he didn’t get into a ’fresher soon.
“Patience,” I told him, finding it odd to be the one using the word. “It’s not far now. We must stay at Anienka’s Happy House. I promised my cluster.”
It wasn’t quite a lie, since Ansky—technically my mother—had insisted I stay with her on each of my visits to Prumbinat. She owned a piece of property of the sort commonly referred to as “unique.” As one might expect, this meant a place where no sane being would choose to build a permanent structure, although if one could . . .
... and Ansky, in her Prumbin persona of Anienka, had.
Mind you, she’d had some help. Mixs had been intrigued by the challenge presented by our web-kin and spent several years on the project.
We were approaching the result on a towsled, the Prumbin version of an underwater aircar. It was, as the name stated, a flat sled with hand/claw/sucker holds on its dorsal surface— presently being used by myself, Paul, and thirty-seven members of varied species—towed by Busfish fry. Since the fry were too young to have lost their urge to school, the Prumbin driver used reins connected to the harness of an individual swimming in the midst of the others. The rest of the fry were harnessed directly to the sled. The result wasn’t particularly straight travel, but speed made up the difference.
A pretty, if intimidating means of locomotion, I thought, watching the flickers of bioluminescence coming from the mouths of our Human-sized fry as they lured close any unfortunate creatures swimming along our path, then snapped them up.
A dangerous place to swim no matter where one looked. Our sled was among hundreds moving along the Brim, a sight that mimicked the appearance of the small shoals which seemed to fly above a reef. Just replace the varied colors of coral with the gemlike lighting from the Prumbins’ city, and move the source of all this life into the Abyss.
Our sled veered out, as if following my thoughts. I swung over the side to admire the depths, holding on with all six arms as I passed outside the shelter of the coning plas and faced the substantial current being produced by our passage. Except where massive, down-directed lights from the Brim painted the walls in drifts of grayed sediment and black rock, vision was of no use here. But my Oieta-self could taste the richness of the life below, however strange its chemistry compared to that where a sun could reach. Here, the planet’s core heat started the binding of energy within molecules.
And, as Ersh would have said, life always took advantage.
“Is that it?” Paul asked.
I was about to answer, having stayed hanging over the side to enjoy the suspended smorgasbord being delivered to my mouth, when Ersh-memory surged through me and I saw where we were going . . .
... through multiple eyes, each so exquisitely sensitive starlight would burn. No light here. Muscles shudder as they are pushed past fatigue. No rest here. Danger follows, its taste contaminating above and ahead. Only the depths remain free of the taint. For now.
There.
A glow only these eyes could see marks home. Triumph! A final drive forward—
Pain! A stab through scale and muscle tissue that becomes a grip, a pull. Upward to the danger.
Cunning serves better than anger. Ersh/I recognize the harpoon’s barb shaft, understand its purpose, know the three-fingered hands at the other end of the line. We’ve seen the newcomers who hunt this ocean.
Rise, slowly, offering no resistance. When there’s enough slack, whirl with mouth gaping and sever the line tied to the fish-riders, a motion that continues with a fluid dive into the safe dark of the abyss.
Listen, taste, feel for signs of pursuit. The depth the airbreathers have already come in their pursuit is unprecedented. The new is dangerous.
There! Turn, a move so powerful and swift it drives a wake against the wall of the abyss, disturbing ancient clouds of what had once been the shells of green and dancing life. Slip through the clouds into a fissure unseen from above, a cavernous hiding place large enough for a dozen more of her/my kind.
Except that her/my kind was as alien to this ocean as those left to hunt in vain above . . . Amusement . . .
... I came out of Ersh-memory to find myself shocked. While the bits of Ersh I’d consumed years ago often had that effect on me, being prone to arriving when least expected and always containing what I couldn’t imagine, this time was different. I’d never felt her amused before. For all I knew, I thought with some distress, there could be memories of Ersh laughing buried in my mass.
I wasn’t ready for such disturbing revelations about the founder of my first Web. Shuddering, I climbed back up beside Paul. “Sorry,” I mumbled, gesturing further apology with my swimmerets. “Old memory.”
“I hope it was a good one.” He might be angry, smelly, and very tired, but I had no doubt of the sharpness of Paul’s mind under any circumstances. He knew what I meant.
“Nothing to worry about,” I assured him. Although the upwellings of Ersh-memory came less often, I shared any new knowledge with Paul, my web-kin, immediately. Or fairly soon, I told myself, then added a more honest eventually . At least the important—must be shared or there could be a huge misunderstanding later to the lasting detriment of a young web-being—bits of Ersh-memory. The rest I tended to store away, on the basis that Paul hardly needed to know more about another web-being when, as he frequently told me, he was doing his utmost to keep up with one. How, I reasoned, would it help him to know more about Ersh? She and I had been as different as two individuals could be, and still claim the same biology.
I gazed out at our destination as our school of young Busfish zigzagged closer. The fissure that rent the side of the Abyss was no longer dark but webbed with colored light, as if filled by a whisper-thin cocoon, in turn filled by the half-seen form of a winged insect about to emerge in all its glory. As we moved nearer still, my Oieta-oculars could distinguish the individual strands crisscrossing the fissure from side to side. Each appeared deceptively thin, given these were enclosed corridors, and beaded along their length. The beads were rooms of various sizes, some in combination, others alone.
I put my mid-arm around the shoulders of Paul’s suit. “Welcome to Anienka’s Happy House.”
Ersh-memory overlay past and present, discovery and result. I found myself believing I’d done the right thing after all—something I usually postponed until the distant future, when there was some hope of evidence to prove it. “Remind me, Paul,” I said, “once you’ve washed and eaten, and we’ve both slept, to tell you the legend of Etienka the Fisher and the Guardian of the Abyss.”
I was sure the Human would enjoy the tale of how Etienka, revered as the discoverer of the Nirvana Abyss, had been guided through the depths by a vision of the largest Prumbin of them all—a saintly figure who had magically disappeared within the Abyss after showing Etienka the way.
Funny how the legend, so rich in detail, completely missed the part about the harpoon.
I had a feeling Ersh had been amused by that nugget of irony, too.
I slept our first night in Nirvana cradled in a watery bed, caressed by exactly the right amount of current to make my Oieta-self perfectly comfortable. It was a complete waste of luxury, since I was exhausted to the point where I could probably have rocked myself to sleep with one suit pole. I wasn’t the only one. When I checked on Paul before bed, I found him asleep inside the ’fresher, leaning into the spray. It had taken considerable thumping from my side of the ceiling to rouse him. From what I’d seen through the mist—an unsettling phenomenon to my Oieta-self, given it was just enough moisture so one died slowly rather than quickly—his skin had already pruned.
Perhaps it hadn’t been exhaustion alone that finally made us let down our guard enough for sleep. The Human hadn’t told me if he’d been concerned about my remaining an obligate aquatic, but I thought his first sight of Anienka’s Happy Home must have reassured him. Water and air competed for visual space in every direction. It was less a building than an exercise in interactive plumbing. Mixs, I thought, had done the Web proud.
Take our suite of rooms. Paul’s door from the wet corridor—Prumbins were fond of the obvious in naming—was an air lock, complete with storage for his suit; mine was a simple door. Our doors to the dry corridor? The mirror image, with my room opening through a wet lock. His side of our suite, or rather its lower floor, was dry and filled with what appeared to be species-appropriate furnishings. I’d been too tired for an inventory. Mine was a lovely series of concurrent bubbles, shaped by a force mesh; predators were an unspoken natural hazard. There was no weather in the Abyss—another feature the Prumbins found heavenly. Well, I
corrected to myself, discreetly cleaning my filters of nonconsumables with the brushes on the inner surface of my arms, there was always detritus. But the rain of solids through this watery sky never varied enough to be worth forecasting.
If I preferred, I could invoke the exclusion casing over the mesh and use the House’s internal water supply; even, had I wished, selected an optimum temperature and pressure, since not all aquatic life-forms enjoyed the physical environment of the Abyss as much as the Oietae. Any water entering my rooms would be rich with life—room service took on an entirely new meaning when it came to filter feeders.
There were sections of the Happy House where any distinction between ocean and air blurred, corridors half-flooded, rooms that were pools with islands in their midst. You could wade, float, or swim, depending on physical ability or preferred technology, all at a temperature and pressure suited to your species’ optimum. I supposed even flying species could have managed, if they could fit inside a suit for the trip down. To the best of my, and Ansky’s, recollections, none had been tempted. Perhaps sky dwellers weren’t interested in a paradise without one.
Most importantly, however, my floor was Paul’s ceiling, made from a transparent, membranelike material the Prumbins had discovered, called “clearfoil.” Clearfoil resisted pressure, becoming stronger as more was applied to it. It was thus, unsurprisingly, the perfect building material for the Brim. From Paul’s side, there was a control to invoke a privacy mode, temporarily opaqueing the clearfoil. I didn’t have that option, but any aquatics choosing this particular accommodation knew they were on display. Most, like real Oietae, wouldn’t be bothered at all. Best of all, our suites contained a com system that allowed us to freely converse—or listen to the same music—through our respective media.
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