Alphonsus put one hand on the scan-tech’s shoulder, half reassurance, half to keep himself steady. He was a Port Jelly, not a general.
“Maybe they heard about the gem rush,” someone ventured, provoking a few nervous chuckles.
“Let’s not make assumptions,” Alphonsus said, straightening. “Cilla, send a squeal set for one-day translight, coded for Commonwealth military vessels. Tell them our situation. Make sure they know we have significant civilian traffic on the ground and no way to clear landing space. Warden, Lerya, Joe. I want those ships out of orbit and any inbound fools turned around now. Send them to Szhenna if you have to. Who’s linked to Nerri?”
“Me, sir.”
Dravis. Her voice wasn’t as steady as the rest, but that could have been feathers over her implant. “Advise Nerri to shut down this system if they haven’t already. No incoming traffic. Get that confirmed by Havaline. Don’t take some groggy ’tech’s word for it.”
That drew another, easier set of laughs. They were settling into the work, relying on him.
“Yes, sir.”
“And someone go down to crew quarters and wake up Mason and Trit. I want them to go out and find a Tumbler who knows what’s happening. Now.”
The Chief Constable took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and let it out again, then nodded to himself. They’d done what they could about the near future—that left dealing with the now. “Bris?” he said firmly. “Let’s find out what Largas wants and get him off that evac pad. We might need it.”
24: Shipcity Afternoon
FOR once, I wasn’t the one who’d misjudged a form’s capabilities and had to suffer the consequences. Though my pleasure in Skalet’s current misery was probably both ephemeral and childish, I couldn’t bring myself to feel any guilt at all. In fact, I thought Ersh would have enjoyed it, too.
I was, however, a little puzzled by its cause. Finally, after testing the cold rain curtaining our shelter with my fingers for the third time, and imagining Skalet crouched just beyond sight in the deluge, I had to ask Paul. “Do you know why she won’t come in here with us?”
We sat shoulder to shoulder, so I knew he could hear me over the storm. Still, his answer was slow in coming. “I’d know if she were Human,” he said at last, in that tone of voice he used when hoping to avoid further questions.
Not that it worked. I was a firm believer in questions, and their answers. His reply was not satisfactory at all. “She is not Human,” I pointed out. “I see no reason why she can’t come in out of the rain.” Skalet didn’t have the excuse of needing to dump heat—her cycle into the Refinne and back would have taken care of that excess quite nicely. Which meant, “She could become chilled,” I told him. Not that it was much warmer inside our tiny cavelike shelter, given we sat on cracked pavement, protected by a portion of collapsed wall.
For some reason, Paul sighed deeply at this, then moved as far from me as possible. Intermittent bursts of lightning helped me see that he was pulling off his clothing. As a being of superior judgment, I clutched mine tighter to me and prepared to protest this behavior.
But the next flash revealed I was alone. Paul? I waited three breaths, then, just as I shouted: “Paul!” a figure dove through the rain to crouch next to me. I reached out in the dark, touching chilled, wet flesh, feeling the shudders coursing through muscle as the body tried to warm itself. “That was pointless,” I started to say, then realized the breathing beside me wasn’t his.
Flash. Skalet, a glimmer of rain-slicked white. She had clothing in her hands and was struggling to put it on. Paul’s clothes. Several possibilities passed through my mind, none of which completely fit the events. I pulled up my knees and curled into a morose ball to await enlightenment.
Once Skalet finished squirming, she gave a low whistle. Another figure dove into our shelter—as wet and almost as cold—and shoved against my other side, pushing me into my web-kin. She didn’t complain, likely because I was by far the warmest thing in our now overcrowded cave.
Was, being the operative word, as Paul tucked himself into my shoulder and his chill began to steal heat from that part of me as well. From the feel of them, they’d divided the clothing so neither had adequate protection from the weather. Both were soaking wet.
I decided against further questions, given the unlikelihood of a sensible answer from either of them until the storm ended. If, I grumbled to myself, trying to reclaim at least some room for my shoulders, I received one even then.
I certainly didn’t expect one from Skalet, even if she was responsible for our huddling here to wait out the monsoon which had taken the place of sunset. Paul had the Quinn family’s ident. Skalet and I knew the codes to release funds to any of a hundred other suitable identities for this planet. We could have been dry and warm by now. With supper.
But no. We were waiting for dawn and hiding in rubble, the remains of a row of buildings near the shipcity. From the way the pavement shuddered periodically, structures built to withstand hurricane winds had succumbed to the arrival of massive docking tugs and other paraphernalia of modern transport. Though I recalled from Ansky-memory that Carcows could do significant damage to cobblestone, if allowed to follow the same route too often.
Useless facts. I hunched into a tighter ball of discomfort, wishing I had the Human ability to pick and choose what to remember. Like Ersh, I could isolate selected memories into specific portions of my mass and completely remove them from my body—a dreadful process requiring a significant period of mourning, and occasionally fudge, even when I knew my missing portions were in the kitchen cryofreezer.
There should be an easier way. Whenever I complained, Paul was fond of telling me that facts, seemingly useless or otherwise, belonged in libraries, collected and organized for anyone to use. A dangerous concept.
Paul and his library, I sighed to myself, relaxing into the growing warmth along both sides as the larger Human forms beside me began giving back what they’d taken. It was a dream my friend clung to as fiercely as he protected my secret; a dream fed every time I answered a question about another species or taught him another language; a dream my secret made impossible.
Web-beings don’t dream. But we sleep as appropriate to our formsake’s. As I drifted toward unconsciousness, I found myself imagining Paul’s library as he’d described it to me in loving detail late one night, long ago. There had probably been wine involved. The building would be low, white, and welcoming, with a shipcity of its own formed by visitors. There’d be a park close by, large enough for a Lanivarian to run, delightfully wild and dark at its edges. At its core would be gardens, each suited to a different species so those who wanted a scent of home could find it, while explorers could sniff or otherwise sample a dozen planets in a stroll.
Inside, there would be comfy chairs for any being who chose to visit. I’d added this to the vision; Paul had smiled. Then he’d talked about rooms for scholarship and debate, space for those inclined to stay, and transcription halls for those who wished only to come and collect what they wanted.
As long as they came in person and left knowledge in return.
I smiled sleepily. My Human web-kin. A library of language and culture, where users had to contribute. Open to all species. Skalet had feared I was forming an ephemeral Web.
What would she think of Paul’s dream?
The being in question moved uneasily, making a small, unhappy sound in his sleep. I made sure my elbow, rather small and sharp, wasn’t in his ribs, not worrying about Skalet’s comfort as I readjusted myself. If she wanted to sleep, I told myself, she could cycle into a Skenkran and hang from the ceiling.
I knew I was being petty. For one thing, an adult Skenkran couldn’t fit without folding in half. My mood had something to do with losing the urge to sleep between imagining Paul’s future and being aware of Paul’s present—both ruined by my web-kin.
How had Skalet known to follow us here? That was the easy question. Of the ships available to us on Minas XII
, only one had had a destination a web-being would choose for hiding. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d arranged for that freighter to stop at Minas XII on its way to Prumbinat. Skalet was no believer in luck.
Why wait until now? Harder to answer. I might have assumed it had something to do with Picco’s Moon and what was happening there, except for her reaction to that news. I poked my neat Human tongue into an intact cheek, remembering all too well. As for one of Skalet’s affiliates betraying her? Again, if she’d only just discovered that, it couldn’t be why she’d sought me out. There was something else, something she was hiding.
I was seriously tempted to cycle and bite her to find out.
Hunger woke me, hunger and snoring. I could ignore the first, and did for a while, closing my eyes tightly against the dark, promising my stomach sustenance when the sun returned. But the second?
I had no idea if it was the positions they’d both curled into, the seawater they’d likely inhaled, or some peculiarity of exhausted, damp Humanity, but I was being assaulted in stereo. Mind you, Paul’s snore was an almost hypnotic rumble. That alone I might have endured. But Skalet? There was nothing endurable about an erratic whistling sound interspersed with a most undignified snort.
Besides, it was high time I started things moving in a direction of my choice, not hers.
They’d probably considered me safely boxed in between them. Obviously, neither remembered the flexibility and stealth of a young Human. It was the work of three whistle /snorts for me to extricate myself from my elders and slip out of the shelter.
The rain had stopped, replaced by a soft, warm breeze redolent of wet Carcows and compost. The fronds of the trees scratched against one another and the tree trunks, making a hissing sound as though we were still by the shore. And I was dry! I looked up at the starry sky, lifted my arms above my head, and spun a couple of times for the sheer joy of it. Very quietly. Paul had frequently demonstrated an uncanny ability to hear the tiniest noises I might make, even if he’d been fast asleep. I didn’t doubt my combat-trained web-sister could do the same.
Then I tiptoed away, my bare feet making no noise at all on the cobblestones, heading for the glow at the end of this street that marked an intersection with the living part of Gathergo, the part that led to the shipcity.
It was time for me to start acting like the Senior Assimilator of the Web of Esen.
Including finding something to eat, I promised my now hopefully gurgling stomach.
Otherwhere
RUDY couldn’t tell who looked more flabbergasted: Timri, frozen in the act of grabbing for Kearn; Kearn, hands half-raised as if to protect himself; or Cristoffen, staring down at a weapon that had fired a flash of searing blue . . . and done nothing.
Before Kearn’s bemused assistant found something else to fire, Rudy shoved him up against the wall, using his broad forearm to pin him there while he tore the weapon from unresisting fingers and tossed it to the floor. “Don’t move,” he ground out, not taking his eyes from Cristoffen’s. “Lionel,” he called. “You all right?”
“Did you lose your mind?” this from Timri, although it wasn’t clear to Rudy if she was berating Cristoffen for trying to kill her or Kearn for trying to protect her. Likely both, he thought.
“Captain Lefebvre?” Cristoffen bleated past Rudy’s arm, though he wisely remained still. His eyes had opened wide, their pupils dilated. “What are you doing here? Do you have any idea what’s going on? You should be helping me—”
Rudy considered playing along and then shuddered. Lie to the Kraal with this hothead at his side? “I don’t think so,” he growled, all the while quickly checking Cristoffen for other weapons. None. An unprepared hothead at that. He pushed his captive toward a chair. “Sit and be grateful I didn’t snap your neck.”
“Lionel!” Answering one question, Timri had by this time taken hold of Kearn by one shoulder and was shaking him. “What were you thinking?”
“Not now, Timri,” Kearn insisted. He pulled free, then walked over to his desk chair and sat down, for all the world as if preparing to give another of his stuffy lectures on proper crew deportment. He even steepled his hands on the desk. They were shaking, but he did it. “I think you have some explaining to do, Ensign. Starting with whatever that was you tried to use against—a fellow member of this crew.”
It was one of his lectures. Rudy did his best not to smile.
Timri had already picked up the weapon, passing it to Rudy without a word, her troubled gaze never leaving Kearn. Rudy lifted the crude, stubby thing so he could examine it and still keep an eye on Cristoffen. There was a trigger and a handle suited to a Human hand, but where the muzzle would be on a conventional blaster, the metal opened into a wide mouth. It looked designed to make bubbles, not cause death—a harmlessness Rudy didn’t believe for a moment, despite the lack of effect on Kearn. He took advantage of everyone’s preoccupation with Cristoffen to tuck the thing inside his shirt.
“But—” Cristoffen was groping to understand and not doing particularly well. “Why did you get in the way, Project Leader? I could have—”
“Killed me?” At the other’s mute nod, Kearn went on: “Fortunately for both of us, weapons seem to misfire around you. However, I think I deserve to know why, don’t you?”
“My cabin—someone broke into it—I came here to warn you—it had to be her. But—” Cristoffen stared at the objects on the table in front of him. “It was you, Project Leader?”
“Hey, I helped,” Rudy said, easing closer in case Cristoffen tried anything. “And while we have your attention, Michael, why don’t you open your mail? And, carefully, if you don’t mind?”
Cristoffen glanced up, his face suddenly fearful. “And then? When you don’t need me anymore?”
“We don’t need you now, you murderous little worm—”
“I will have no more violence,” Kearn admonished Timri sharply, then turned back to Cristoffen. “Now, Ensign. I want you to follow Captain Lefebvre’s orders. He’s in command of the Russ’ now.” Rudy cooperated by doing his best to look as though this wasn’t a complete shock. “We have reason to believe the Kraal feeding you information—and this weapon—is in the pay of the Esen Monster. That’s why we searched your room—looking for evidence. She’s been using you to identify and remove the very Humans who have been spying on the creature for signs of the pending invasion. You’ve been working for the enemy.”
You old fraud, Rudy thought admiringly.
Cristoffen’s lips parted and his pupils dilated. “How do I know you are telling me the truth?”
Kearn patted the book on the table. “Do you know what this is, Mr. Cristoffen?”
“It was a gift. It came with the shield. I couldn’t decipher the language. I assumed it was a code the Kraal would explain later, when I needed it. I was told to keep it in my quarters.”
“This is not a gift,” Kearn said very gently. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, but he leaned toward the Human who had just tried to kill him. “This is your death warrant. It’s a Kraal assassin’s mark, to be retrieved as proof by the one who kills you. If you want to know if I’m telling you the truth? That envelope, Ensign, will contain a message. That message will concern a final task the Kraal will ask of you. After you do it, you will be killed.”
Assassin’s mark? Rudy glanced at Timri, who shook her head very slightly. So she didn’t know if Kearn was making this up either.
Cristoffen didn’t share their doubts. His eyes fixed on Kearn as though the other was his sole point of reference in an unsettled universe, his right hand reaching to draw the envelope across the table. Only when it began to fall over the edge did he look down and use both hands to hold it. “I’m supposed to bite it open,” he said faintly. “Or the message self-destructs.”
“You do know they love to use poison,” Rudy said before he could stop himself. Still it seemed a shame to lose Cristoffen before opening his mail. “Try spitting on it, instead.”
“Unless y
ou prefer chewing,” Timri added unhelpfully.
“Comp-tech.” Kearn didn’t look at her. “Go to the bridge and inform the captain that there’s been a change in command. Pass along my regrets, but he’s to collect his gear and remain on Sacriss XIII until another Commonwealth ship is in the area. Assure him we will make sure that is soon, and he’ll receive full pay in the interim. Then, have Resdick notify Port Authority to hold a tug at our disposal.” When she didn’t move, he finally looked up. There was something in his eyes that was almost pain, an unfamiliar grimness to his mouth. “Timri. I’d like you off the Russ’, too. No, don’t bother protesting, I know better than to ask. But do this much for me.”
Timri’s face might have been carved of stone. “So I won’t know what’s in the envelope. Rudy, tell him this isn’t right.”
Rudy crossed his arms and shook his head. “It is. I could argue that one of us should be on the other side of the door, in case this is a trap for more than just Cristoffen here, but I won’t bother. Just trust us. You don’t want to know more about the Kraal than necessary.”
She gave Kearn another hard look. “Go,” he said, very gently. “Please.”
When the door closed behind her, Rudy made sure it was locked. Then he moved Kearn from his desk with a sharp nod to the corner of the office. “So you aren’t distracted,” he told a now-ashen Cristoffen. “Now. Go ahead.”
“I can’t. My m-mouth is dry.”
Kearn disappeared into his bedroom, then returned with a glass of water. “Try this.”
It would have been funny, Rudy thought as they watched Cristoffen’s efforts to spit on the end of the envelope, if you didn’t know the Kraal.
“That’s all I—oh!” The exclamation came as the first tiny droplets contacted the envelope and immediately turned bright orange, then black. At the same time, one side of the envelope began to bubble and hiss. Cristoffen dropped it on the table and backed away until he hit the wall.
“Wait,” Rudy cautioned. The outer material gradually dissolved away to reveal the contents of the envelope: a single sheet of ordinary-looking plas, coated in a silvery dust. So it had been rigged. Not with poison, he realized with an inner chill. This Kraal liked to make a statement. The dust was all that remained of microscopic darts embedded throughout the envelope, the type able to burrow through clothing and into skin, through flesh and into vital organs. Not a pleasant or swift way to die.
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