Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  It felt as though dry land was farther away than ever, despite the way the second set of warn-offs sped past our little flotilla of Humanity faster than the first. The channel was narrowing as it approached landfall, waves from the open ocean now funneling between massive break walls. Those walls of tumbled rock and coral, painted a predictable yellow, were part of the Prumbins’ ongoing efforts to keep their Drossy herds from making landfall where they shouldn’t, and from grazing on what the Prumbins would prefer to eat themselves. Not to mention walk on what they shouldn’t and leave what they shouldn’t behind.

  There was, I thought, a lot to be said for Rigellian sheep. Beginning with their being too small to accidentally sit on their shepherd.

  Not that this was the optimum moment to ponder agriculture. The three of us were tied together with the filament originally intended to keep me tethered to Paul. The lack of slack wasn’t a problem, since we wanted to be as hydrodynamic as possible once the propulsion unit was engaged. What was a problem was the way Skalet and I had to gasp for breath between drenchings. Supposedly Paul was doing his best to be a stable life raft, but at times I thought he was deliberately testing the lungs of this form by tumbling down the leeside of each wave.

  All too soon, we approached the narrowest point, where the pent-up waves heaved into a tortured landscape of white-capped mountains, with the added bonus of a significant undertow grabbing any foot dangling too low. This maelstrom approach suited the Busfish and Drossy, giving the huge creatures a necessary boost over the submerged sandbar that had originally protected this part of the coast. The Prumbins had considered dredging a channel, but leaving the sandbar as an obstacle had proved the only way to slow down approaching Busfish. Always a concern.

  So this was it. I took a deep breath, holding it and Paul as Skalet set off the propulsion system. I lost the breath immediately as my view of the waves ahead became much too intimate, an alarming blur of froth and blue-green as we plunged straight through. The tie around my waist dragged me along, but the water’s force tore at my grip on Paul. My left hand came loose.

  A hand clamped over my right wrist, holding it firmly against Paul’s suit as we kept moving forward.

  Ersh knows how I avoided cycling. The urge didn’t come from our apparently suicidal passage through the channel, although it should have. No, what risked my self-control was the feel of Skalet’s hand performing such a—Human—act.

  We were in daylight again, so quickly I felt disoriented. The waves were tamed back into long, gentle swells, their power diluted as they spread the width of the harbor. Our momentum kept us moving on the crest of one, right on target.

  “We’re clear. We made it.” I saw no reason for Paul to sound as though he was gasping for air, since I was the one with seawater burning her sinus cavities.

  Skalet, who’d been looking ahead, said, “Wait.” Something hit my leg. Her foot. She was kicking to slow us down.

  Obviously, there was something not quite right with my web-kin. I hauled myself on top of Paul’s suit to see what she was doing. “Getting to shore was the idea—”

  “Not there. Not anymore.” Her breathing was ragged as she put more and more effort into altering our course.

  “What’s happening?” this from Paul, who was stuck on his back and facing the way we’d come.

  “Give me the knife.”

  “Not until you—”

  “Then you cut him free of the suit, fool, so he can swim! Hurry!” Skalet began to swim in earnest, awkwardly, pulling the rest of us using the line around her waist.

  There were many things that made me stop and think about my actions. That snap of command in Skalet’s familiar voice wasn’t one of them. I began slicing the fabric of Paul’s suit with frantic haste. What had she seen in that glimpse landward?

  My Human helped, ripping loose the fasteners and tossing aside the goggles. I cut free the line binding us together before Skalet could tow him underwater. With a final struggle, Paul pulled himself out of the suit, which sank as he released it. He ducked his head below the surface, washing what appeared to be lines of dried sweat from his face and hair. Then we both relaxed, treading water, preoccupied by the sight of Skalet’s thin white arms appearing and disappearing as she swam steadily away, parallel to the beach.

  We turned to look at each other, I for one delighted to see a face instead of goggled and distorted eyes. A tired face, that nonetheless smiled at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Ask me again on dry land.” As if that had been a signal, Paul and I looked toward shore.

  There should have been something ludicrous, almost harmless, about a group dressed in black uniforms moving among colorful tourists on a tropical beach. There wasn’t.

  “If those are Kraal,” I protested, “why is Skalet avoiding them?”

  “Does it matter?” Paul asked grimly. “You can’t swim much longer.”

  I spat out a mouthful of water. “I’ll cycle and tow you,” I offered, already preparing to leave this form, with its tired legs and tendency to sink.

  “No.”

  “You, too?” I sputtered in disgust. “There’s mass everywhere—”

  “Esen, she has a reason for staying Human—for wanting you to do the same. Let’s not second-guess her or the Kraal.” Paul, as at home in water as any primate could be, took off his footwear and tucked them in the belt of his pants. Then he rolled over on his stomach, looking as comfortable as if he’d been on a mattress. “Hold onto my shoulders. Careful not to—” I eased up and Paul resurfaced. “—push down,” he continued.

  “Thaddaway,” I offered helpfully, as my Human steed’s arms began to dig into the Prumbinat Ocean with a reassuringly steady rhythm.

  Although there was nothing reassuring about following Skalet as she fled her adopted culture.

  Otherwhere

  THERE was a Port City on Picco’s Moon, consisting of a necklace of prefabricated aircar and tug hangers loosely arranged around a trio of buildings on stilts. The stilts served the dual purpose of allowing passing Tumblers to ignore the existence of the buildings—which had somehow been built over one of their most commonly used roadways—and made it feasible to host meetings between Tumblers and nonmineral beings on the ground floor, had such meetings ever been held.

  The two larger buildings belonged to Crawdad’s Sanitation Ltd.: one was the windowless and heavily guarded warehouse where the officially sanctioned collection of ritual leavings, from the ground floor and other, more secret locations, were sorted for buyers offworld. The other possessed windows that were usually curtained against Picco’s lurid orange and contained luxurious living accommodations for those doing the guarding, collecting, and sorting. The top three floors were devoted to sanitation inspectors and their vehicles, since locating new deposits of ritual leavings was a chancy thing that depended on patterns of Tumbler movement.

  The shipcity itself was an open and reasonably busy one, the Tumblers unable to comprehend why a sanitation company would want a monopoly on shipping. So Crawdad’s was forced to welcome independent brokers interested in bidding on smaller or damaged stones. In the spirit of making the best of things, the sanitation company did open a bar for spacers, justly infamous for the dilution and cost of its drinks.

  The third building held the maintenance personnel and equipment required to keep starships—and spacers—moving. Unlike other remote and bleak postings, there was a long list of applicants for even the most menial tasks here, individuals drawn by rumors of easy wealth. One of the most popular was that you could sell the soles of your boots—and accumulated gem dust—for a small fortune. As Crawdad’s owned the boots and all rights to any dust, debris, or dirt—however faceted and valuable—newcomers learned to be grateful for the percentage of sales Crawdad’s granted each worker. Or became poachers.

  There was law, of a sort, on Picco’s Moon, if you counted a Port Authority that divided its time and resources between resolving docking disputes, rescuing and prosecuting cr
ashed gem poachers, or acting as local guides so entrepreneurs and traders didn’t wander into one of the local and quite toxic Tumbler garden spots. No one was fond of cleaning up the result, especially Tumblers.

  Chief Constable Alphonsus Lundrigan could have been in charge of Picco’s Moon’s Port Authority since the just past Eclipse or since alien ships first landed. Few Tumblers were able to identify separate species let alone individual members. If asked, however, Tumbler Elders would have chimed themselves pleased, overall, with the efforts of the flesh-burdened to keep their own out of the way. Before recent events, that is.

  Tumblers, it turned out, were not so different from nonmineral beings. At the first sign of serious trouble, they were quite capable of finding out who was in charge and who should be responsible.

  The only problem, Alphonsus grumbled to himself, was he was neither.

  The shipcity had grown since he’d last stood at this viewport. As it had last night, and the preceding true day. And the ones before those. The docking tug operators were becoming adept at packing them in. It was easier since no one seemed in any rush to leave. There were ships on every scrap of properly level pavement, including what had been tug lanes. Now, from where he stood, the entire winding expanse of the Literiai Plateau was a maze of starships. If he squinted through the port from the side, it could almost be a forest.

  A forest the Tumblers wanted removed.

  Maybe. Or maybe they were encouraging more trade—the visitations seem to suggest that. Everyone knew the day had to come when the Tumblers realized they didn’t need to pay Crawdad’s Sanitation to clean up the Port City.

  They’d sent him messages, brought daily by a delegate who, in most un-Tumbler fashion, asked for him by name. Long, convoluted messages. Messages that were longer than most books he’d ever read. None of them actually referred to the starships. None of them, that he could tell, were complaints. Some were quite entertaining, in a cryptic way.

  Yesterday, they stopped. Alphonsus didn’t know what that meant either.

  But it didn’t take an alien culture specialist to know this haphazard flood of uninvited ships was unpopular with one group. Alphonsus grinned to himself. Naomi Crawdad and her company suits were burning up the com lately as well. Since the rush, a Tumbler couldn’t drop a glittering bundle without a horde of spacers ready to pick it up.

  Not that there’d been a Tumbler here since yesterday’s chime-along—or whatever you’d call it when an impressive group of twenty Tumblers lined up to chime a single chord for most of the afternoon, right in front of the only shipcity access not plugged by a starship. Alphonsus’ grin widened. Crawdad’s futile effort to cordon off the deposits had almost precipitated a riot.

  It wasn’t that he disapproved of the company’s legal and exclusive contract; he simply enjoyed seeing someone else grab the big ones for a change.

  A polite cough signaled that his second-in-command, an older Moderan named Bris, had managed to sneak up on him again. Having padded feet was cheating. “What is it?” Alphonsus asked, turning his back on the viewport.

  “Sir.” Bris had stopped a safe distance away, although he was really quite adept at not spitting when vocalizing sibilants. His soft snarls were translated into comspeak through the implant in his throat. “We’ve a translight com for you. It’s Joel Largas of Largas Freight. He says—well, you’ll want to hear this for yourself.”

  Alphonsus stiffened. Was this it? The trouble he’d been waiting for? He hadn’t slept a full night this week, not since that warning arrived—or, more accurately, since he’d flashed a coded message to Paul Cameron and it had been reflected back, an indication the host receiver was nonfunctional and the backups hadn’t been engaged.

  Paul had promised the system was foolproof, that he’d be able to compensate from any location with a translight com.

  In his lengthy career, on worlds and stations where he’d investigated crimes that turned stolen boots and incomprehensible chiming into ways to mark time until retirement, Alphonsus had learned the simplest explanation for someone failing to make contact as expected.

  They couldn’t.

  The person who might know was waiting. Alphonsus tried not to appear to hurry to the com room, the heart of any Port Authority. Picco’s Moon boasted better equipment than its traffic required, by way of obligatory donations from Crawdad’s Sanitation Ltd. Much of the equipment sat unused, however, because Tumblers funded the staffing. Since none of Alphonsus’ predecessors had been able to clearly convey the need for increasing numbers of staff, they’d been unable to increase that funding from the amount requested before Alphonsus was born.

  The lack of staff hadn’t been critical until this week, when he’d had to assign search and rescue personnel to sit the coms along with the regulars, or risk ships coming in on the same landing vectors. Right now, it looked deceptively peaceful; the staff looked half asleep. A few waved a greeting. Most were leaning on one or both elbows, staring into their displays. Cups of sombay paraded across every surface, some steaming, most cold.

  At least they only had to deal with local traffic on actual approach, Alphonsus thought with relief. Innermost of three Port Cities in the Xir System, their responsibility was confined by Picco’s orbit and included only this Moon suitable for landing. Outsystem traffic routed through Port Authority on Nerri, the most distant of Xir’s worlds, into Xir Prime, then was further sorted insystem as it passed Port Authority on Szhenna, a popular stop for methane breathers seeking a spa experience.

  Alphonsus decided against having the call transferred to his office, however much he’d prefer privacy. Privacy implied something to hide, not a safe thought to raise when it was true. “Station 4, please,” he asked quietly, hearing Bris echo the request as he took the empty chair. When the green light flashed, he pressed the button to accept. “Port Authority, Picco’s Moon. Lundrigan, here.”

  “Phonse, when are you going to retire?” The friendly, familiar greeting, as if nothing was wrong. He’d know Joel Largas’ rich voice anywhere.

  “When they raise my pension,” he replied, as always. “What can I do for you, Joel?”

  “Get me down there, Phonse. Your people are telling me to park in orbit. My captains are telling me there’s some kind of rush—that Tumblers are throwing gems at them. What’s going on?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. But you know I can’t mess with the docking priors. We’ve got—” Alphonsus snagged the daily report from Bris’ paw and read the line in red “—thirteen ahead of you. And Largas Freight has, last I looked, six ships already docked. I’m not playing favorites. They’d lynch me!” Given the passions he’d witnessed for himself the last few days, that wasn’t necessarily exaggeration.

  “I can’t tell you everything on an open com. Trust me, Phonse, you want me down there, now. The criminals responsible for the attacks on Minas XII—I’ve reason to know they are already on Picco’s Moon or coming your way.” A pause. “You know me, Alphonsus. You know I wouldn’t be here—wouldn’t be asking this—if it wasn’t a matter of life or death. I’ve kin on those ships. Including my grandchildren.”

  “I know.” The Largas Legend had finned down two days ago, Tomas and Luara Largas being sent to pay the courtesy call and docking fee. Tomas, all grown-up and looking more like his grandfather every day; Luara with their father’s eyes and disconcerting attentiveness. Without a clear idea what had happened, Alphonsus hadn’t dared ask if they knew why Paul wasn’t answering. “Give me a moment. Lundrigan out.”

  Alphonsus drummed his fingers once on the console, then lifted two in a signal. Bris leaned closer. “The evac pad’s still clear?” he asked.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “We don’t want criminals roaming about, do we? Let’s get him down, hear what he has to say. He can keep his engines live—lift out of the way if we need the pad. Make it happen, Bris.” Alphonsus surrendered his chair to the other, whose subvocal snarl didn’t need translation.

  Al
phonsus walked toward his office, preoccupied by the dreadful conviction he knew exactly which criminals Joel planned to expose to him. He was halfway across the com room floor when the com-tech at station nine turned and said: “Sir! Sir, we have Ganthor.”

  The head of Picco’s Moon Port Authority stopped in his tracks. “Say again?” he asked weakly. The entire room went silent. Everyone listened. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Bris rising from his chair, the hair on his shoulders and back fully erect so the Moderan looked half again his normal size.

  The com-tech’s voice was amazingly professional, all things considered. “I repeat, sir. We have Ganthor on approach.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yessir. It’s hard to be wrong about them, sir.” An understandable edge to the last “sir.”

  “Do we have them on scan?” Alphonsus demanded, moving toward the scan-tech as he spoke, meeting Bris so they loomed together over the unfortunate being. “Hurry up! What’s the word from outsystem?”

  Voices began to overlap, properly calm, informative voices, now that he’d put them to work. “Szhenna reports fifty heavy cruisers incoming on the elliptic.” “Nerri confirms a group of fifty. Now they report a second fleet upward of seventy. They’re still scanning.”

  “I have them, sir. It’s hard to count them while they’re bunched. Sir. Szhenna confirms. The Ganthor aren’t responding to hails. They’re just—coming.”