It turned out that nearly all the rafts had some extent of lab warrens. This discovery was a disappointment, since Realgar had hoped to have only one lifeshaping place to guard in each raft system, instead of eight times as many individual rafts.
More disturbing, it appeared that not all raft populations were as receptive as Raia-el. Several squads landed to find rafts deserted, homes completely empty. In one case, an entire system was gone. Fifteen hundred people could not just vanish; they had to be hiding somewhere.
On other rafts, all the adults were found in whitetrance. “In these cases,” reported Jade, “the patrols searched all homes and concluded, ‘No laboratories present.’”
“That’s nonsense. The patrols all have holocubes of what to look for.”
“I doubt they ever located the rabbit-hole inside the silkhouse. Iridians,” Jade added, a clear insult. “One odd case is left. Company Seventeen observed extensive damage to wildlife of several rafts. The captain thinks the natives are testing biological warfare.”
“Where the devil did he get that idea?”
“I couldn’t say, General.” Jade’s reply was blandly correct. Not even his chief of staff was supposed to know the real reason behind this campaign. The campaign itself had not yet been made public by the Palace. “I think it’s a false alarm,” Jade added. “That raft system is within the Aragonite testing ground.”
“Of course.” The House of Aragonite, a member of the Shora Development Consortium, was developing potent toxins for seaswallowers.
Within two weeks, most of the natives were meeting inspections in whitetrance. Rough handling seemed to make no difference; they were in trance, and that was it. Sabas retaliated with daily reconnaissance flights, zooming low over all the rafts, just to remind them that Valans meant business. But it was of little practical use, Realgar thought, barely worth the fuel consumption. Infrared and sonic scanners soon located tunnels, but the rafts were riddled with them and they all looked the same. At least Siderite was still making progress at Raia-el, where Usha was supposedly instructing him every day. Sabas suggested that they should await further developments from Siderite before pressing the inspections further.
Realgar disagreed with the major general. He decided to test an idea of his own. With Sabas and Siderite, he flew out to one of the rafts that had resisted from the first. They approached a silkhouse, outside which sat one adult native in trance, marble white with blue veins.
For no obvious reason Realgar paused a moment. Wind from the sea blew shrilly past his ears.
He wondered whether the native was conscious in this state. Traders gave conflicting answers, and Berenice had never spoken of it at all. With an effort he broke the silence and announced his orders, as he had with Merwen. He followed with a rough native translation, adding, “We share no harm. Your sisters on other rafts have cooperated with us.”
The native made no response. Several minutes passed. Realgar was very conscious of Sabas and his officers watching the affair.
He tossed a holocube onto the raft. A cube of light-images sprang up, life-sized: himself, Merwen, other natives, a few legs and arms cut flat at the sides of the recorded space.
“Greetings, Protector,” spoke the image of the general, reciting his Palace orders. Realgar had edited Merwen’s response, leaving only her quaintly phrased acquiescence: “Come on, then. Usha understands the needs of the sick.”
The cube of light vanished.
Shadows of movement flickered across the eyelids of the entranced native. A pale lavender gradually seeped into her skin. Her eyelids opened, first the regular outer ones, then the translucent ones underneath. She said gravely, “What needs can we share with sick children?”
Realgar wondered what she was getting at. Was his native vocabulary defective? He said carefully, “All we need is to share-seeing your place of lifeshaping.”
The native then rose and led his team through her house. Siderite confirmed the identity of the lab warrens. Major General Sabas was no use at all, Realgar decided, and he wondered if he dared request a Sardish replacement.
At another raft, however, the trick failed to work. Three natives, blue-veined white, simply sat and stared out to sea.
Realgar was only slightly disappointed He had not expected to solve the problem outright. The main point was, he now had direct evidence that the natives were consciously ignoring Valan orders. “Take all three up to Satellite Amber.” There, Jade would work on them. The bodies hung like rags as they were carried off.
Siderite stared in surprise and sucked his lips. “General, is that necessary? Our local informants provide plenty of assistance to…”
Realgar stared coldly until Siderite’s words trailed off. “You’re under orders, doctor, like everyone else. Get yourself a uniform to remind you.”
Siderite swallowed and hid his anger poorly, but a healthy trace of fear was beginning to show.
At any rate, Realgar decided, it was about time for a progress report, to find out whether the scientist was getting anywhere. Realgar received daily records, of course, but to him they were useless gibberish. The main thing he wanted to know was, were these lab warrens genuine laboratories or not?
“Oh, they’re genuine, yes.” Seated in the general’s office, Siderite was full of his usual enthusiasm. Even in uniform his shoulders were rounded, and the pointed tips sagged. “There’s work space, there’s plumbing. No glassware, bottled chemicals, or autoclaves, much less recognizable analytic hardware. But those vines you saw, they form galls whose cavities can be inoculated with pure cultures of microorganisms. Other vines are specialized secretors for enzymes, organic reagents, acids, you name it.”
Realgar was relieved. “Then their real labs are not hidden.”
“I couldn’t swear to that,” Siderite cautioned.
“Come now, there’s always uncertainty.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that.” Siderite’s eyes defocused, and he stared into space. “In a sense one might say…the whole planet is their laboratory.”
“What’s that?” An entire planet? Sweat broke out on Realgar’s forehead.
Startled, Siderite shook himself. “Just speculation. Fascinating possibilities.”
Realgar suppressed an impulse to strangle the man. “It was my understanding that Malachite had told you everything you needed to know.”
“With all due respect, General, the Envoy is just a servo, remarkably keen at data collection but limited for analysis. That’s why I’m here, after all.”
The audacity of this offhand remark pushed Realgar beyond words Had Siderite slept through the day of judgment of Pyrrhopolis? Nine years, Realgar reminded himself: nine years before we face that again. He swallowed and made a grudgingly civil reply. “When will your…analysis be complete?”
“In what respect?”
“To control their technology, by Torr. What good are a thousand inspectors, watching night and day, when they don’t know what to look for?”
“No good. Give us, say, ten, twenty years perhaps—set up an institute—”
“Out of the question. The Envoy expects us to control them long before that.”
Siderite’s shoulders slumped. “The Envoy didn’t tell me that. Well, perhaps their ‘lifeshaping’ is less advanced than it seems.” Siderite actually sounded disappointed. “But my guess is that, short of forcing their hand, only long-term study will tell you what Sharers can do.”
Provocation. Would he have to provoke the natives into showing their hand? The Envoy had said it would take them another generation to produce a real threat. There had to be something else. A ghost of an insight arose but eluded his grasp.
“By the way,” Siderite added, “those guards you send with me are a hindrance. They interfere with my work.”
“They’re for your own protection. That will be all for now, Dr. Siderite.” The last thing Realgar would do was to leave this civilian alone with those treacherous natives.
One of the traders de
briefed by Sabas’s staff proved particularly knowledgeable about native customs. He was Kyril, manager of the Hyalite outlet in Per-elion, and Realgar had him called in to clear up what mysteries he could. “For one thing,” Realgar asked, “why do you suppose the natives describe us as ‘sick’? What are they getting at?”
“Disapproval,” Kyril said. “It means they don’t respect you enough even to insult you.”
Realgar had suspected as much, despite the cool politeness natives had shown. “Your frankness is appreciated. Tell me, what is your opinion of Sharers, after your years of dealing with them?”
Kyril pursed his lips. “They’re honest, I’ll say that for them. Infuriatingly so. And they take what you say as literally as a servo. But they’re tough nuts to crack.”
“How do you mean?”
“Tough as Dolomites, catfish are, when they’re in their own element. Water’s their element, and water’s all around. Watch how you hook them; they’ll run till the line snaps. We managed all right, until the day when all the catfish decided traders were ‘sick.’ Then the deal was up.”
“All of whom?” Realgar asked. “A raft Gathering?”
Kyril’s arms spread wide. “The whole planet, it seemed, overnight.”
“They can’t plan together. They have no long-range communications.”
“If you please, General, they claim to telegraph subsonically, somehow, underwater. They complain to us constantly about interference.”
“So it’s easy enough to sabotage.”
Kyril nodded. “Those insects communicate too, but I’m not sure what their range is.”
Realgar had heard of clickflies, but he did not take them seriously. Insects, indeed. “So how’s your own business doing these days? Not very well, I hear.”
“No trade.” Kyril slashed the air with his hand. “My own outlet’s closing out next month. You want some cut-rate rubies for your troops?”
The general permitted himself a smile. “How would you like to sign on with us as a consultant?”
The trader pulled at his lower lip. “Don’t get me wrong, General, but what sort of action do you foresee here?”
“We’re here to install police. What other action could there be?”
The two men regarded one another coolly. Kyril said, “Well, an army is one thing catfish don’t have, and it takes two of those to fight a battle. All the same—” Kyril grinned wryly. “I wish you better luck than ours.”
On day fifteen of the inspection campaign, Colonel Jade reported to the general’s office in person. Her cheeks were drawn in tight lines.
Realgar asked, “What’s the bad news?”
“The prisoners, General.”
At a word, the light signals changed behind his desk. Further recording within the office would be upgraded to the highest security level. “What happened?”
“One died.”
“I did not authorize that.”
“I am aware of that, General. The mindprobe triggered it.”
Neither the pain-triggering neuralprobe nor the analytic mindprobe were intended to kill. They were “clean” probes, designed to read and control with maximum precision and minimum physical damage. Jade was an expert who rarely slipped. But now, Realgar would have to consider the details of what had gone wrong. It repulsed him, for some reason.
“The prisoner never came out of whitetrance,” Jade said, “so I skipped initial interview. The scanner picked up all brain signals okay, but as soon as the mindprobe began—that was it.”
“A hypnotic deathblock, to stop the heart?”
“Not an ordinary block. Usually I can detect that and probe around it; it might be a deathwish, say, at a certain question. This was different: a total block to the slightest touch of mind.”
“A total deathblock. I see.” Mental deathblocks were illegal on Valedon. To find one so absolute, among supposedly peaceful people, was a surprise. What could such a block be aimed against? The technique must have been developed long before Valan troops arrived. “Suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps their minds are just too weak for the probe.”
Realgar doubted that. He was sure the victim wished and intended to die. “How are the other two prisoners?”
“Still in whitetrance.”
He waved an impatient hand. “How can I run this place if the prisoners won’t break? You will find a way—and avoid further ‘failures.’”
“Yes, General.”
Nonetheless, he thought, what a subtle deathblock it must be to fool a Sardish expert. Poor Berenice had been completely taken in; those natives were terrorists, underneath, as tough as the Azurites who had got her in the end. Force their hand, Siderite had warned. Realgar planned to do just that.
11
AT THE NEWLY settled raft of Leni-el, Lystra was digging tunnels for lifeshaping, and strapping young starworms beneath the raft branches, and on top of everything she faced the plague of Valan death-hasteners.
The soldiers she could cope with, despite their cravenly childish behavior and those clattering beasts they rode in the sky, hovering and swooping like overgrown fanwings. But what numbed Lystra to the heart was the silent noise that grew beneath the waves, worse than ever before, to drown the song of the starworm. Now only clickflies could get word to rafts across the globe, and that might take weeks. Lystra felt as if she had lost her own ears.
The Gatherings would have to respond to this unprecedented upsurge of Valan rudeness and puerility. Lystra almost wished she had stayed home to help, but still, it was a relief to get away from Mother for a while. Unexpectedly she missed people: Flossa, who had always tried to emulate her, and Shaalrim, whose unflappable humor had refreshed the sometimes dreary Gathering. At Leni-el, the Gathering was younger and less experienced than at Raia-el, and Lystra was disconcerted to find herself an “elder,” expected to keep everything running smoothly.
There was pain when she thought of Spinel, whose departure she herself had caused, as surely as she would have liked to when he first arrived. Why had it happened? After all, she had never been so happy. Spinel was shockingly “different” but as delicious as…as any other sister. (She would not think of Rilwen in the same breath.) He was easygoing, yet earnestly caring, and so innocent of all the stratagems of will that most sisters shared with each other to the point of exhaustion. Nonetheless, he had asked of Lystra the one thing she could not give, then tore at her heart where it still hurt most. She should not have forgotten Rilwen so soon. There was no time for bitterness now: eat bitterness, and bitterness eats you.
She was returning to Mithril’s silkhouse one afternoon, with a load of octopus dragging behind. Nisi was weaving at the loom. “You look ready to eat the whole catch,” Nisi said.
Lystra grinned and thumped Nisi’s back with a weary arm. Nisi, too, was better off beyond Merwen’s scrutiny, even though she had learned whitetrance. Nisi had regained color and spirit since she left Raia-el; only rarely did Lystra catch her brooding alone with haunted eyes. Nisi had hiding places for when the soldiers came, in the storm tunnels, and in airbells deep below, in the cold underworld, where she had hidden from her mad mother before.
From the silkhouse, Mithril’s chatter carried over. “A strange clickfly dropped in. We couldn’t get the message; it comes from very far. It flapped like mad to go on, but I trapped it in the house. Nisi says you might know its code.”
“I’ll try.” Lystra squeezed herself through the door, which was still tight, in need of reworking. She paused to admire the new wall cover. Mithril had painted several tones and textures of green, with different fungal variants, and swirls of a rare yellow strain. The pattern captured the grace and excitement of a glider squid bursting from the sea.
A clickfly was hovering anxiously, looking for a window. Its message must be urgent. Lystra caught it in her fingerwebs. Its black-plated back was torn from buffeting in upper atmospheric winds. “From the Sixth Galactic,” Lystra said, noting the code of the colored r
ibs behind its head. She delicately flicked the sound-scraper mandibles until the insect started up its frantic message. Then she made it restart, because the code was in an unaccustomed dialect.
“Three sisters,” Lystra interpreted. “Disappeared. With Valans.”
“With Valans?” said Mithril. “Disappeared? You must have it wrong.”
“Valans shared their leaving,” Lystra insisted. “That part is clear. The Sharers were in whitetrance, yet Valans physically took hold of them, and they disappeared.”
Nisi laced her bare fingers and squeezed them. “Why? Does it say?”
“Do Valans ever say why?” Lystra flung the clickfly out the door to send its message farther. “I meant nothing personally,” Lystra added.
“Of course not,” said Nisi abruptly. “I’m not a Valan anymore.” Nisi was a Sharer—and now all Sharers were to be hunted like fish. Would they all have to take to the shockwraith’s lair?
Lystra’s chin tightened. “We’ll see if the Gathering will put up with this.” Yinevra at least would not. Yinevra knew how to deal with Valans.
At this Gathering, Sharers collected from all eight rafts of Per-elion. No one knew where the three sisters had vanished, or how long they planned to stay. One had left two small children. Had Valans sought their help for something? To share healing?
It was understood, now, that Valans suffered a terrible madness because the Death-spirit ruled their souls, perpetuated by creatures of non-life who walked and spoke, yet never lived. This must be why Valans were so obsessed with Sharer lifeshaping; but what lifeshaper had ever heard of such an affliction, let alone its cure?
Even Usha’s new Valan apprentice, though not a death-hastener, had offered little help on this point. Siderite simply agreed that most of his sisters were mad. When asked about the three lost sisters, he was greatly upset and refused to share more. Usha explained, “Valans are ashamed of their madness. They don’t like us to see.”
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