Abruptly Merwen grabbed her arm and pointed out along a level branch. A giant squid lay across, apparently dying; from its pear-shaped body the arms dangled so far that their tips were lost in the depths. Above was a sight that froze her blood: fleshborers in a swarm, brown streaks that writhed and snapped relentless jaws. They descended on the squid and burrowed in and out of it as if sewing a ghastly seam. Red clouds oozed, obscuring the frenzied feast.
Be rational, Berenice told herself; reason must keep her still, as she watched the red cloud. The “squid” was not a true cephalopod, since it had iron-rich blood instead of the less efficient hemocyanin; that was why cephaglobinid species ruled the Ocean Moon, from the kilometer-length seaswallowers to the petite fleshborers now devouring their hapless cousin—
Merwen flicked a webspan down her own neck. Watch out, the signal meant: the beasts won’t be full; they’ll come for us next.
Come for herself, Lady Berenice of Hyalite? Nausea overwhelmed her until she fought it down. Very slowly she headed upward, and Merwen followed. The fleshborers were dispersing now. One broke away and darted up toward her.
Merwen’s arm shot out; she caught the sinuous body in one hand and looked into its snapping jaws. Her other hand took a whorlshell and thrust it down the throat. The shell snapped, but the jaws jammed. The beast jerked away, thrashing about randomly.
Berenice surfaced, wheezing and choking for air. She swam inward to the dry raft core where all the branches fused into one massive disk, climbed up onto the rough bark, and sat there, trembling uncontrollably. Across from her sat Merwen, crosslegged on a patch of moss. A breeze whipped past, rapidly drying their skin. “We nearly shared death, there,” Berenice ventured in the lyrical Sharer tongue.
“No,” said Merwen. “Death alone can never be shared, no matter how hard we share life in her jaws.”
Berenice swallowed hard, and tears stung her eyes. Unconsciously she drew back from Merwen. She was alone here, among people whose ways could still prove inexplicable after her many years of living among them. An ache filled her head that was worse than any physical pain. “I’m going home. To Iridis.”
“We’ll miss you,” Merwen said. “You are strong, Nisi; you didn’t panic at all. When you rejoin us, will you choose a selfname?”
She was as astonished as if someone had appointed her High Protector. Selfnamers were, collectively, the Protectors of Shora.
She caught herself, now, safe in Iridis. Her hands were clenching a steel rail which bounded the terminal platform of the skystreet. Her pulse returned to normal, and she let go of the rail, where dark blotches marked the sweat of her palms.
Before her, beyond the interminable courtyard, rose the face of Palace Iridium. A blunted triangle, to symbolize the never-seen Patriarch above all, the facade inclined slightly so as to rise like a steep mountain slope. Mosaic tiles, a million shining tesserae set in iridium, depicted scenes from the founding of the Patriarchy: the First Nine Protectors, with their planets and legionary symbols, then smaller panels below for the hundreds of planets brought under protection before Iridis assumed the High Protectorship of Valedon. The uppermost panel, which could easily cover a city block, showed the Torran Envoy Malachite. The Envoy was ageless, enthroned with eternity in his gaze. He had brought the Patriarch’s word to Valedon for nearly a thousand years.
At the foot of the Palace was a skeleton of scaffolding, cranes, and other metallic insects, all setting up for a lavish pageant of welcome. The Envoy Malachite was due within two days.
A hovercraft picked Berenice up from the end of the skystreet and deposited her at an entrance hall some distance up the Palace face. Inside, the vaulted ceiling glittered with every gemstone known; for stone was more than a passion for Valan citizens, it was a source of exchange with distant planets which had exhausted their own supplies of various rare minerals.
The mineral potential of Shora’s untapped seabed was one reason for a new interest in that moon. Besides that, of course, there were the medicines and perfumes, and above all the fine seasilk that the councilors and courtiers wore; even now, they passed Berenice in their long talars and sweeping trains, such lengths of the gorgeous stuff that little servitors like tortoises had to crawl in their wake to prevent the trains from snagging and tangling. Seasilk and minerals—that was what Shora meant to Talion.
The doors to Talion’s office whined and parted and slowly swept inward. Talion sat as always behind his desk, a thickset man with tired gray hair and eyes nested in wrinkles. “At last,” he said, “the Lady of Hyalite. We were just speaking of the Shoran question.”
To her surprise, Talion was not alone. From a swivel chair at his right rose General Realgar, to whom Berenice had been engaged for over a year now. Realgar said quickly, “Don’t look so startled, my dear. I came here on other business entirely.”
“Promotion,” said Talion. “To Commander of the Protectoral Guard.”
“Well, congratulations.” So the old commander who had let Pyrrhopolis get out of hand had finally been retired, and just in time for Malachite’s appearance. Realgar had been aiming for the top post ever since his decisive victory over the separatists in Sardis.
Realgar bowed in acknowledgment. The immaculate shoulder line of his uniform swooped to the tips like the edge of a crescent moon. His fair complexion and straight auburn hair marked him as a Sard, and he still wore the orange-brown sardonyx of his former post.
Berenice smiled, genuinely proud of his honor and glad for what she knew it meant to him. There was a gleam of triumph, too, to think that, unconventional as she was, she had managed to captivate the second most powerful man in Valedon. Of course, she reminded herself, it did help to be Councilor Hyalite’s daughter. Perhaps her father had clinched the promotion. “So long as it’s not Shora you’re bound for next, you have my blessing.”
His mouth lengthened slightly, the closest to a smile that he would permit himself in public. “That’s your project, not mine.” He accepted her work on the moon, much as she put up with his tours in the field. “Shora is hardly a military concern,” he added.
“And let’s keep it that way.” Talion pointed to a chair that had risen out of the floor.
Berenice seethed inwardly while she took the offered seat. She did not need such a crude reminder of the precarious position of her Sharer friends. If only she could get an audience with Envoy Malachite, Talion would sing another tune.
“Lady Berenice,” Talion began, “for three years now you have kept us informed of what goes on among these Sharers.”
“And informed them of Valan objectives.” A devil’s bargain it was, but someone had to do it. Better her than Talion’s coldblooded agents, who had failed in any case to make much sense of Sharer ways. Berenice, however, had correctly forecast both the crisis in the stone trade and the mysterious “environmental” problems that plagued Valan fisheries on the moon. For herself, she could only hope to keep up a dialogue between minds so divergent that any success seemed a miracle.
“Then why do they persistently ignore our objectives?” Talion’s eyes accused her. “After keeping to themselves for decades, they now start turning up on Valedon to bring their troubles here. I banned them from our ships a month ago.”
“But what have they done, for Torr’s sake?” Berenice gripped the arm of her chair. Surely Merwen and Usha at least were safe; she had “shared learning” with them personally.
Talion ticked off his fingers. “Vagrancy. Traffic without a stonesign. Illegal medical counsel. Spying for a foreign power. Slandering the Patriarch. Immoral cohabitation.”
“My lord,” she interjected, “surely the last charge—”
“Applies well enough. This is Valedon, my lady; we cannot let the customs of other planets undermine our social order. The same goes for indecent exposure and witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft?” Her glance appealed to Realgar for support, but he was watching Talion politely. “You did say ‘witchcraft,’ my lord?” she ask
ed.
“They turn into ghosts,” Talion added with a straight face.
Not that again. Berenice was annoyed. “I must have sent you a dozen reports on the whitetrance phenomenon—”
“Nine reports, to be exact. By the time you reach a dozen, you might even tell me just what the phenomenon is.”
She flushed. “You know at least what it’s not.”
“But the common folk don’t, especially in the rural provinces. A thousand fools believe a lie, and it’s good as truth. Wouldn’t you agree, General?”
Realgar leaned forward. “The main point as far as Sharers are concerned is discipline. I know they’re outside our own law at present, but—”
“Realgar,” said Berenice reprovingly. “You know how harmless they are.”
“No lawbreaker is harmless,” he said reasonably.
Berenice crossed her arms. Why did Ral have to be here today? she wondered. Their relationship worked best with certain parts of their lives kept apart.
“Sharers are subversive,” Talion told her. “As subversive as you are.”
She sidestepped this reference to her checkered past. “What was that charge of ‘spying’ all about?”
“Your own friends Impatient and Inconsiderate admitted as much. They called themselves ‘soldiers’ and ‘spies.’”
She laughed shortly. “A language problem, I’m sure. I’ll clear that up.” Privately, she was troubled. Merwen spoke Valan too well to use words loosely. Why exactly had they come here, and why had they declined to stay with Berenice? The city climate did not suit their health, Usha had said.
“Let’s hope you do clear it up. And for their own sakes, let them know what the score is, before they join the others in prison.”
“Prison?” Berenice half rose from her seat. “Who’s in prison?”
“Another couple, calling themselves Lazy and Absentminded. Picked up for indecent exposure. They not only refused questioning, they turned white and limp to the point of coma. They took no food, and they soon stank like fish. After three nights they were dumped back on the moonferry.”
Berenice shut her eyes and swallowed painfully during this recitation. Whatever happened to Sharers she took personally, as if she were both victim and perpetrator. “You only make my job all the harder. For years I’ve played up the benefits of free trade for Sharers, how useful our metal gadgets can be, and so on. I’ve ironed out countless problems with the local traders. But now, with such unwarranted treatment, why should they listen anymore?”
“Your notion of free trade does not always coincide with reality. Your own father is the founder of the Trade Council.”
“Which nowadays fixes prices and milks the planet dry. What will Malachite say to that?”
Realgar was suddenly alert. Talion did not move a muscle. “My lady,” Talion said at last, “you go too far. If you told your friends to expect the Envoy to favor them, you made a serious error.”
Her pulse quickened, for she had in fact told them as much and still believed it. “Forgive me,” she said with drawn-out irony, “I forgot that nonhumans are of no interest to the Patriarch.”
“It’s not that simple. Their genetic character allows a possibility that they descended from human stock.”
“More than a possibility,” she corrected with ill-concealed contempt. “But who cares? A thousand fools believe a lie, and it’s as good as truth.”
Realgar’s face was a taut mask, as always when he hid unseemly emotion. It nettled her to see him embarrassed on her account, but he should have kept out of her business.
A thought occurred to her. “Has the Envoy himself already sent inquiry about Shora? Well, has he?”
Talion flexed his fingers, clasped above the desktop. “Subtle are the ways of Torr.”
Of course; that was what had him worried. Berenice tried to hide her satisfaction. Now was the time to play her trump card. “If Malachite should choose to contact Sharers…you might like to know that I’ve been asked to take a selfname when I return to Shora.”
Their reactions were gratifyingly swift. No Valan, after all, had ever been known to join a Sharer Gathering before.
“Promotion,” Realgar remarked dryly. “My congratulations.”
Talion leaned intently across his desk. “Then we’ll have a direct line on their policymaking.”
“Call it a firsthand view,” Berenice said carefully. “I will tell you and Malachite what you need to know.”
“And what you choose to tell. You would do well to be forthcoming.” The High Protector paused as if weighing a choice. “Malachite will make his own inquiries, of course; his means are far greater than ours. But he won’t get started for some time yet, and whatever you can discover before then—” He stopped.
Unconsciously Berenice clenched her knees while she focused her attention on Talion. “It would be helpful,” she said slowly, “to know what I am looking for.”
“If this leaks, my lady, you’re finished. Malachite believes that these creatures, whatever they are, may have powers that interest him. Forbidden sciences.”
Her eyes widened. Whatever could he be getting at? To be sure, Sharers were not the barbarians that Talion officially took them for. Their “lifeshaping” skills in particular were advanced, she believed, though incomprehensible to Valan doctors. But their skills could not extend to the forbidden. Forbidden sciences, by definition, were banned because they destroyed their creators. Shora had lived in peace for at least ten thousand years.
From Realgar’s helicopter, Berenice watched the massive crystal garden that was Iridis pass slowly back below them. There was the silver dome of the fusion plant that Pyrrhopolis had tried to emulate, and there were the square courtyards of the Academy Iridis, where all permissible ranges of learning were preserved.
“Berenice,” Realgar began, “your loose manner of speech with the Protector surprises me. It’s unwise.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, then relaxed in a chuckle. “Do I offend your sense of diplomacy? Ral, I’ve known Talion far longer than I’ve known you. He dines with my parents every week.”
“It’s not like you to appeal to your parents.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” she said seriously. “And it’s not like you to reopen old wounds.” She leaned into his chest, and the stun gun at his belt pressed into her side. Realgar brought his right arm around her, somewhat stiffly, the hand half closed. His arm had been torn apart in the assassin’s blast that had killed his first wife instead of himself. Sardis had settled down since then, but the province still deserved its reputation for intrigue. Berenice wondered at times whether she herself risked a similar fate, though in a place where she rarely looked she knew that she loved him more because of the alluring risk, not despite it.
Realgar said, after an interval, “The Protector thinks that a show of strength might prove instructive for your Sharer friends.”
She pulled away and glared at him. “I knew you had cooked something up together. He wants an invasion, doesn’t he, the old troll. ‘Pacification,’ you’ll call it.”
“Nonsense. An exercise, a demonstration, that’s all he proposed. They’ve never even seen a troop detachment or a directed-energy device; they have no idea of what we can do.”
Berenice leaned back in the cushioned seat and closed her eyes. He must have good reason to tell her this, but she was so tired of the game. “It won’t work, you know,” she mused softly, more to convince herself. “The Sharers simply won’t understand. And when your invasion lands, they’ll all turn into ‘ghosts.’ You’ll look rather silly, then.” She believed Realgar’s assurance, as far as it went. But the one sure lesson of her life was the fragility of sureness. She had to share some tough learning with Merwen, before it was too late.
6
THE NIGHT BEFORE Spinel was to leave home, he stared out his window at the sky full of stars that shimmered in the sultry air, among them the blue gem that was Shora. Panic swept him. How could he ever ho
pe to survive on that little moon image, a drowned world millions of kilometers away? Would he turn into a fish and be trapped there forever? He was insane to go along with those moonwomen just because no one wanted him here.
On impulse he fled from the house and ran down the unlit streets, all the way out to the pier where the Sharers’ boat was moored. He would tell them the whole deal was off, that already he was homesick for Chrysoport, that his father needed him for the stoneshop…
His foot caught on a rotten plank, and something splashed in the gloom below. He stopped; the market square was a different place at night, a realm of ghosts and shadows and the mournful clang of chains against the dock posts. He felt slightly foolish as he stared at the hull of the boat, where the name Hyalite gleamed in opalescent letters.
That Lady of Hyalite was to join them at the space landing tomorrow. No Iridian lady would go off to let herself turn into a fish, Spinel tried to convince himself.
In the morning, half the village gathered in the market to see him off on his bizarre journey. Spinel could only think of his family, whom he faced for the last time. “But not the very last,” he assured Beryl as he kissed her tearstained cheek. “I’ll come back to see your new baby.” He hugged Harran, saying, “You take care of my sister, okay?”
“Take care of yourself, now,” Harran said. “If it’s true that fish grow as big as mountains up there, be sure to hook one for our stew-pot.”
Spinel grinned and felt a little better.
Then Oolite set to wailing, louder than a flock of seagulls; Beryl had to pick her up and soothe her.
His father embraced him awkwardly, with eyes cast down, and pressed a cloth full of agates into his pocket. “Gifts. Help you make friends up there,” Cyan muttered tersely. “May the Sharers make a fine judge of you.”
A Door Into Ocean Page 4