“Send the Valans back,” one sighed. “Yes, close the door. Our lifeshaper says that breathmicrobes will drive them out.”
Amid all the sisters bustling in and out, Siderite arrived as usual with his two guards, who no longer bothered to enter the silkhouse but stolidly flanked the door and played games with little flat spotted leaves. Siderite himself was not really a soldier, despite his plumage; he proved it by stripping to his shorts, when out of sight of the guards. Merwen liked Siderite, thinking that he was almost as sisterly as Spinel.
Now Siderite paused uncertainly, as he watched Merwen adjust a blanket around a witnesser who had not yet regained consciousness.
“Share the day,” said Merwen, a little out of breath.
“Well, look, I…” Siderite’s hand waved aimlessly, like a confused angelfish. “That is, if it’s a bad day for you—a lot of guests you’ve got here,” he finished.
“So what’s one more?”
Siderite flashed a smile. “Thanks, I’d get an awful hassle for a blank report.”
Merwen got up. “Come, we’ll see what Usha’s up to.”
In the lifeshaping chamber, Usha was staring at a very complex three-dimensional clickfly web, the sort that only experts learn well. The pattern was full of short, dense stretches stuck together at geometric angles. The connections represented atoms of a living molecule.
“Share the day, Inconsiderate One,” said Siderite.
Usha had not heard him, Merwen thought, knowing that preoccupied stare. “It still doesn’t fit,” Usha grumbled. “Shora, I’m as thickheaded as a seaslug. Why can’t I get the structure to fit?”
Siderite cleared his throat and inspected the model.
Merwen tapped Usha’s shoulder. “Dear one, he wants to know what it is.”
“The air poison, what else? It’s volatile, so all I get is traces to analyze. And I’m so close, too.”
“Oh, I see,” said Siderite. “Agent Two-Six, that’s what you’re looking for. If that line represents a methyl group, it belongs on the other side.”
“Is that it?” Usha asked. “For certain?”
“Of course it is. We’ve got canisters full of it.”
“Good. By tomorrow night I’ll have an enzyme to chew up the poison.”
Siderite’s mouth hung open. “You mean you’ll go through the whole genetic design—today?”
“I should hope so,” said Usha indignantly. “It’s a simple molecule.”
“May I observe your work? I’ll stay out of your way.”
Usha looked him over. “You can stay if you share the work. My other apprentices are overworked enough.”
Merwen went back to the raft surface to spread the good news. The witnessers were cheered enormously to hear that the air poison would be swept away. Merwen herself did not stay cheerful long. To relax, she swam out among the branches, where the last of the seed pods were hanging from bowed stalks. She wondered, Shora, what seeds have you sown for us now, and what unimagined horrors have yet to grow of them?
At Planetary Headquarters, a pattern developed: the natives would collect up to fifty or so behind the fence, until the gas was released again. Then other natives in their boats would come to retrieve them, and within another hour replacements would begin to arrive. They always collected gradually, as if testing and retesting the limit to the soldiers’ patience. Some patrols shooed their boats away and sank a few, but more natives would always swim in without boats. During the night the “invasions” diminished, and the next day only two or three natives appeared.
On the third day, Realgar watched from inside the garrison as natives arrived again. They collected faster than usual, reaching a hundred before the guards opened the gas canisters.
A few of them sagged and coughed, but they soon recovered. They pressed closer to the fence, a growing wall of purple flesh. And helicopters reported hundreds more on the way.
What was wrong with the gas? Was the shipment defective?
A spasm of fear passed through him, so fleeting that Realgar could not define just what scared him. It left only a cold sense of facing an unknowable enemy thing, and the urgent need to beat it back.
“Fire into the crowd,” suggested Jade.
That brought him short. It might come to that sometime, but so far—one had one’s honor to consider, after all.
Seeing his look, Jade added irritably, “Well, fire over their heads, and maybe aim crooked. For Torr’s sake—”
“Enough. Where’s Sabas?”
“Sir?”
“Sabas, try convulsant gas; that should hold them.”
“There’s none in stock, sir. It’s on back order, for riot control.”
“Well, expedite the order, for Torr’s sake. Iridis must have a warehouse full.” That was the first time he let slip an open slur on Iridis. Sabas showed no response, but then he wouldn’t. “All right. Get me that trader, what’s his name.”
Within minutes Realgar was in his office with the trader, Kyril. By now, reports had the crowd outside at three hundred, half of them children.
In uniform now, Kyril was special consultant on native relations. Kyril put his fingers together and nodded slowly. “You realize, sir, you’ll have to start shooting, sooner or later.”
“Does that include naked three-year-olds? How would you explain that to the Palace?”
“Well, now. You have to understand, sir, when I first came out here twenty years ago, the catfish weren’t considered human at all, just another part of the natural fauna. You can’t even mate with them properly, and to my mind—” Kyril shifted his weight and sat forward. “Look, if you’re going to call them people, you better understand just what kind of people they are. They never had to back down to anyone, not since before the rise of Torr, and they just plain don’t know how. You’ll have to blow up half the planet to teach them.”
Realgar thought, he should have let Jade get on with it before the kids started showing up with their mothers.
“There is one trick, though, that might just work,” Kyril reflected. “To buy some time. And to show you what kind of mentality you’re dealing with.”
From the front line of witnessers at the soldier-place, Lystra stared numbly at the fence wires that rose and spread in open, undulating patterns. Close up, they looked nothing like a clickfly web, just a crude mindless branching of coldstone lines. Their sheen flickered as clouds crossed the sun.
Somewhere behind those wires were her own lost sisters, eight of them by now from two different rafts. Why should Valans desire to keep eight Sharers among them, yet drive out all others with excruciating pain?
Her eyes flitted briefly toward Yinevra at her left, pressed in among the sweating bodies. Yinevra could barely sit up by herself, for she had not yet recovered from repeated doses of the air-poison. Her face was so grim yet pinched by the strain of it that Lystra could only shudder and look away.
A line of soldiers came out and filed past the fence before her. Lystra tensed every muscle; but the soldiers only stopped and waited. One of them was Nisi’s lovesharer, and apparently their most respected wordweaver, if respect was the appropriate term. But a different one stepped forward from the line, someone whom Lystra vaguely recognized: the coarse mud-colored headfur, the wide jaw—
“Kyril.” She struggled to adjust to the shape of him in his altered plumage.
Kyril smiled expansively. “Why, it’s Lystra! Share the day, Lystra; I never expected to see you here.”
It was something of a relief to see the familiar trader, despite his transformation. The bad old days seemed idyllic compared to nowadays.
“You’re too busy to share this place, Lystra,” Kyril said. “Those starworms keep you swimming night and day.”
“And you, Kyril? Does trade no longer keep you busy?” An admittedly nasty remark.
Kyril shrugged genially, and his pointed shoulder plumage exaggerated the gesture. “We’re closing out, as you know. Everything’s marked down; you should go h
ave a look. We’ll be sweeping our own rafts for seasilk from now on, uninhabited ones, so we won’t share annoyance with you anymore.” He spoke as if sharing a great favor.
“But every raft has inhabitants.”
Kyril paused. “Uninhabited by Sharers—”
“So you’ll clear out all the other little sisterlings.” Lystra watched him distastefully.
“You don’t share trust at all, do you. You’ll see; we know a lot more about raft management than we did forty years ago.” Kyril crouched before her where she sat, so that their eyes were nearly level. “Listen, Lystra, what are you doing here, anyway?”
“Waiting for our lost sisters. It’s been two weeks, for three of them. Have you seen them?”
“I know you’re worried. But it won’t help to keep torturing soldiers this way. Why do you think they share poison with you?”
“Torturing?” Lystra was uneasy. “If torture is shared, it is we who feel the pain. We come only to share speech.” Everything worked both ways, but Lystra herself had done no harm.
“But we’re surrounded, Lystra—hundreds of you, and there’s barely a hundred of us in here. It’s driving us crazy.”
Yinevra said, “You were crazy to begin with.”
“And you’re making it worse. What if we die of it?”
“Oh, no.” Mithril stood up. “Why should anyone die from—from us coming to find our sisters?”
“Your witness, your being here, unasked, in our home—it’s too much to take, psychologically. For some of us,” Kyril added quickly.
“Then why do you keep invading our homes!” Yinevra rasped and coughed. “You’re all dead, anyway: living, walking dead! Get out and close your door—” Yinevra heaved with coughing, and another sister came to hold her, to soothe her.
Others were shaking their heads. “It can’t be,” said one. “What about the breathmicrobes, the new strain our northern sister lifeshaped? Does that share hurting, too?”
“Breathmicrobes?” Kyril raised his voice and shared a look with the other soldier, Nisi’s lovesharer. “Lystra, you know how Valans feel about breathmicrobes. That alone will hasten death, I’m sure.”
“A childish fear,” Lystra curtly replied. She did not like the sound of this at all, but Kyril was no selfnamer, so there was no way to challenge him. The truth would have to be checked. Already the witnessers were returning to their boats. “No more deaths,” one sighed. “Too much pain already.”
Lystra got up; her legs stung, and she stretched them. She went to lend an arm to Yinevra, who would let no one but Lystra help her walk. As Yinevra got up she told Kyril, “You’re responsible for yourself, Valan, even as our stonesick sisters are. Don’t think you’ve seen our backs for good.”
Realgar watched the natives begin to leave, some in boats, others just slipping beneath the waves. He could not figure it out. “They really believe that they’re staring us to death?”
“Something like that,” Kyril said. “I tell you, they don’t understand killing, or even almost-killing. They desperately want some rationale for what you’ve done.”
The mention of breathmicrobes sobered Realgar. “Do you really think the natives are behind those outbreaks of purple-skin?”
“Could be. There were rumors the last time, about the purple plague.”
“But why did they tell us? As a threat?”
“I told you, sir, they’re as honest as servos. But they are not fools,” Kyril warned. “If you still want to avoid nastiness, release those prisoners before Lystra and her cohorts have time to think again. Out of pure generosity, of course.”
“Perhaps.” How thoroughly he had misread the drama, from start to finish. He never intended to hold the prisoners indefinitely. Why had things blown out of proportion? And then, with all their insane bravery, why had the natives turned away with a bit of nonsense from Kyril?
What about the breathmicrobes? Could he consider that the first shot from their side?
To know your enemy was the oldest rule of warfare. Realgar would have to learn fast, before they cooked up something worse than purple plague.
4
THROUGHOUT THE WITNESSING, Nisi had helped Usha tend those stricken by the air-poison. Back and forth she went through the fungus-swirled hallways, carrying water and blankets and medicines until she dropped from exhaustion. Most of the victims had recovered now, although a few remained with Usha…Nisi pulled her thoughts back from that. It was better to keep busy, to exhaust every moment, than to think—especially to think of Realgar, who had said, They are peaceful; I’ll go easy on them. Realgar had betrayed her far worse than she betrayed him.
When Lystra came back and the witness was over, Nisi’s temper broke. “What do you mean, you all left? Can’t you see they’re just desperate? Now is the time to push on. What’s the matter with you?”
Lystra’s eyes flashed as they used to so often. She grasped Nisi’s arm until pain streaked through. “And what if it’s the truth? What else could make them share poison? You tell us, Deceiver.”
“They are death-hasteners. ‘Death pays their wage.’ They won’t share respect with you, until you do likewise.”
Lystra’s stare bored into her. Then at last she dropped Nisi’s arm, and her fingers left pale marks. “That will be at the end of time. And the end of Sharers.”
Mithril said, “I don’t believe it. Shora would never let such a thing—”
“What’s true is true,” rasped Yinevra. “What are we, if not Shora Herself? Who will act for us? Come, Lystra, you still have starworms to feed beneath the raft. I’ll help you as best I can from the surface.”
Mithril’s little chin lifted as she watched Yinevra leave. “Death itself won’t stop Yinevra. But I was there too, today, despite my young girl at home, and what’s to become of her, poor thing? I tell you, Nisi, some things are better never to have known.”
Too late for that, thought Nisi. It was too late for innocence. The Primes themselves had not lasted. Ten millennia you had for peace; how many peoples can say that? For your granddaughters, peace will be only a legend.
In the cool water, branch shadows wove fleeting patterns upon the hide of the young starworm. Lystra admired the sinuous trunk that stretched several swimming-lengths ahead of her, though barely a third as long as the maturer specimens of Raia-el. The mouth-stalks of the starworm spread in a perfect star around its lip, none broken and regrown as on older starworms. As Lystra swam to the lip, two swimmers darted from an airbell, carrying rakes to clean the mouth filters of the beast. Cousins of Mithril, the two were just learning the care of the starworm. They approached its mouth from the side, careful to avoid the ingoing stream, which was listless in any case from lack of feeding. And if Lystra and Yinevra had not returned early, the starworm might have gone hungry a few hours more.
The young starworm had long streamers of filters within its mouth, because it was not yet large enough to digest squid or large fish, only plankton and fingerlings. As Mithril’s cousins raked debris from the filters, Lystra swam up to the surface to get the net full of fingerlings that could be fed into that star-rimmed mouth, a handful at a time.
Yinevra awaited her in the boat. “I don’t know, Lystra. This young one isn’t growing fast enough. They all need more feeding at Leni-el, and more frequent raking.”
“Well, I do the best I can—”
“Of course you do, and almost single-handed. It’s just bad luck that the seaswallower got nearly all the Kiri-el starworm crew.”
Lystra looked away. In the net that hung down from the boat, the fingerlings were packed tight but still were fresh pink and wriggled a bit. This would do the young starworm good, but there were a dozen more starworms to be fed on Leni-el. “You think this raft won’t make it.”
“Already Leni-el drifts too far behind the system. As it is, I take too much time away from Raia-el.”
Was fighting the Valan madness worth losing another raft? Lystra did not ask.
“Lystra
, what do you think of the Deceiver’s notions?”
Lystra shrugged. She stretched her arm over the side and drew obscure signs in the ripples. “I still can’t figure Nisi. She likes it here, and yet hates it here.” Lystra hesitated. “She’s still a Valan.” Like Spinel—and Spinel had gone back to Valedon.
“What if she’s right?” Yinevra asked. “If death is all that Valans understand, perhaps the soldiers wish us to help them die.”
Lystra sat very still, her hand just trailing in the water. “What do you mean?”
“Think how tortured their minds must be. Death might be the kindest fate.” She coughed suddenly several times, and her chest heaved. “Ah, I’ll beat this poison yet. Listen: Suppose we set a trap, and warn them, and they still walk into it. Who’s to judge, Lystra?”
The next morning on Raia-el, Merwen was washing blankets and sleeping mats in a branch channel, a large load for the many guests. A commotion of shouting started from the silkhouse. Merwen looked up to see a helicopter standing with Sharers crowding around it. She dropped her wash on the branch and hurried back to see.
Wellen broke away and skipped out to her. “They’re back, Mothersister—all our lost sisters!”
Others were talking excitedly, a few weeping quietly. Several tight-lipped soldiers huddled at their helicopter, with six Sharers, pale and dazed, six of the eight who had been missing. The Sharers blinked confusedly, and one flickered white and lavender, uncertain whether or not to stay in trance.
Realgar stepped forward away from the others. Sunlight traced arcs on his helmet, and his boots ground into the weeds. “Greetings, Protector,” he began. “As you see, we are prepared to release all captives currently held, as well as the remains of those two who died by their own hands.”
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