Merwen said, “I will share care of the stonesick ones. Let anyone who is drawn to stone come to our silkhouse instead. We will share healing, somehow.”
Lystra looked away, quite unable to say more.
“We are gathered, Sharers,” called Trurl at last. “Let the Gathering grow from our silence.”
But as silence fell, the sound of helicopters grew, dozens of them, with a roar that would have drowned out any voices. Then the beasts swooped down, disgorging Valan creatures who stumbled and shouted and started pulling sisters away with them.
Lystra cried out to them, but the Valans had gone deaf. There was nothing but confusion, meaningless noises, here and there a face etched in a flash of horrible light. And all the while it seemed that the helicopters kept coming, and more and more sisters were gone.
The agony wore on, until only a handful of sisters were left. Merwen and Usha—where were they? That was all she could think of.
A numb, stifling rage settled within her. But she gathered close with the few who somehow remained, like the last of a school of fish after fleshborers gorged their fill. She watched the indigo sky, and the stars coming out tranquil as ever, as if this were any ordinary evening. Only humans knew what an evil time this was.
There was a lull in the carnage; the roars died away. Had all the helicopters indeed gorged their fill?
From behind, something grabbed Lystra, twisted her around, and bruised her breast. Blindly her arms swung out and connected the Valan’s shoulder; the act made her shudder, but not for long. The Valan reeled backward, then pulled her over in a somersault. She found herself on her back, facing the stars. She tried to get up, but something hit her head, stunning her.
Then the Valan bent over her and tried to do something with his body, the last thing Lystra would have expected at such a time, the thing she had warned Spinel against before. Pain split her insides; she retched and vomited all over her own arm. The pain still throbbed, but somehow Lystra forced herself up on an elbow. Her vision cleared a bit.
The Valan was doubled up on the raft, yelping like a fanwing caught by its tailfeathers. Other death-hasteners surrounded him, waving their metal sticks. “Poor trollhead,” said a female voice. “You don’t listen to briefings, do you.”
It was beyond Lystra’s comprehension that someone could mean to use an act of loving to share hurt instead. She gagged again until her stomach squeezed up to her throat and there was nothing left to come out. Then the other mad Valans grabbed for her arms and legs, but they had to stun her to take her away.
9
MERWEN SPENT THE night pressed with a dozen others in a cell that stank of urine and had not even enough room to lie down. She stayed in whitetrance, dreading to be caught unawares by a mind invasion before she could stop her own heart. That night, squeezed between a sister’s back and the cold sticky concrete that surrounded them on all sides, Merwen felt for the first time what “war” was. Afterward, Merwen would never be quite the same person who had greeted the Valan soldiers when they first came to Raia-el.
In the morning, bruised and aching in every limb, Merwen and the others were dragged out into the light and left to the sea. It took her last strength to swim within sight of Raia-el, where a child out fishing picked her up.
At home, Usha was back from her own ordeal in the soldier-place. Weia clung to Usha, her little eyelids fluttering stark and wide, and would not leave for a whole day. Even Wellen stayed within the silkhouse, subdued and quiet as she helped repair the panels torn by the soldiers. Merwen remembered how that imp had sneaked down to the lifeshaping place to question the Valan death-hasteners. Now Wellen had a taste of the answer.
Usha went back to her clickflies, the precious few that she had kept alive. She was injecting a virus, which would carry certain genes into the cells of the clickfly, to enable it to live and reproduce in the presence of Valan poisons. Sharers maintained libraries of genes for many species, from edible fish and weeds to seaswallowers and shockwraiths. Shora had said that Sharers must share care for all the lesser sharers as for themselves. The ultimate library was kept within raftwood: every living cell of every raft held a library within its genes, millions of units within a cell too small to see.
Like Weia, Merwen stayed with Usha most of the day. As Usha worked, Merwen caressed Usha’s arm and leaned her chin in Usha’s neck, although she tried not to interfere too much. Her heart pounded with a question she had not dared ask “Usha, did you see anything of Lystra?”
Usha’s face was blank with concentration. Then abruptly it twisted. “No. But I saw many others with burns who belonged here with the lifeshapers.”
Merwen looked down at Weia. “The children will grow old before they grow up.”
“I grew old that day on Valedon, when that hulk of a malefreak raved at us.”
“I grew old years before that.”
“Perhaps you were born old.”
“I was not,” said Merwen a little too sharply.
Usha looked at her, then nodded. “There was Virien, before I knew you. Virien was only one; and now…”
Virien, with a twist in her head that nothing could cure. Virien would have let Merwen die, if Yinevra had not come and beaten the death-hastener in such a way that she could not swim again. Yet Yinevra was the one Merwen had never forgiven, because she was sane, and—
Merwen shook her head and squeezed memory’s door.
“Only one, then,” Usha repeated. “And what good did wordweaving do?”
“Valans are not all like Virien,” Merwen said with conviction. “Their sickness is different. For soldiers, Death has a ‘wage.’” A wage that did not stop with stone and coins, as it did for traders.
Lystra did not return to Raia-el, nor to her new home at Leni-el. Excruciating days passed with more attempted Gatherings and more sisters flown back and forth from the soldier-place, with the burned ones crowding the lifeshaping place, but a few did not return at all.
By the fifth day, things relaxed a bit. Fewer sisters tried to make a Gathering at Raia-el, but the couple of dozen who did collect within the cup of the raft’s ridge were not molested by helicopters.
Merwen sat outside the silkhouse, replacing a split beam in her silk loom, when the sound of a motorboat reached her. The boat was weaving in through the branch channels, not very efficiently. When it reached solid raft at last, a lone Valan stepped out. It was Siderite, in his former non-soldier plumage, without any guards.
Out of the corner of her eye, Merwen watched Siderite approach her. Blood rushed to her ears and she felt hot all over. Where is Lystra, her heart cried to ask; but to ask would be a failure. Lystra would not want her to ask, to break Unspeech, and she would be right.
Siderite’s shadow fell across the loom, darkening the warp strands. He spoke in Sharer. “Merwen, I came without guards. Even the ‘general’ does not share that I am here. Do you understand?” The voice paused. “I’m sorry for all this. Believe me, I hate this mess as much as you do. I can share a way out of it. Listen: all that the ‘High Protector’ really cares about is this learnsharing of mine, with you and Usha. Yes, he would like to control the planet, but it’s not worth the trouble. Too ‘expensive,’ you understand? If you work things out with me, I will—will see to it that the soldiers leave.”
Merwen’s anger grew as she heard this. Even the best of Valans seemed always to be hiding from the worst. Merwen was sick of it; she wanted nothing to do with any of them. But she tried to keep her mind steady. To Siderite’s credit, he had come alone, despite ‘orders,’ which was a big step for any Valan. If Siderite had even a remote chance of learnsharing further, of taking a selfname, then she had to encourage him.
Slowly she turned her head and looked into Siderite’s face. His eyes squinted in the sunlight, and wisps of hair brushed around; his arms hung limp, with fingers flexing nervously. Siderite hungered for a word from her. And Merwen longed to ask what Yinevra had asked Nisi many months before: What is the First Door,
The Last Door each enters alone, the Door of your own name?
But Lystra was missing, and Siderite was not yet ready to tell her where or why. Merwen returned to her loom. A look she had shared; that was all she had in her, for now.
For a long time Siderite stayed, while Merwen waited, and the Valan’s shadow inched across the warp strands. At last the shadow fell away. From Siderite’s boat, the motor sputtered and groaned, then died away.
Merwen gripped the frame of the loom, almost hard enough to break it again. If only she could know if she had done the right thing. Even Shora seemed to know so little anymore.
10
SIDERITE’S WORK SEEMED hopelessly stalled, but the general had planned for that. Not all the native populations were as troublesome as at Per-elion. In fact, one or two company bases reported consistent inspection records and no sign of “witnessers”—in short, their occupied rafts were under control.
The best operation appeared to be run by Captain Theo, a thousand kilometers to the north. So, now that relations at Raia-el had completely soured, Realgar decided to send Siderite out there, where he hoped that the scientist’s work might resume.
Captain Theo had her platoons permanently encamped on native rafts, where they could keep an eye on things. She radioed Lieutenant Basil to be ready when the General came out.
“Not the General?” From inside the operations tent on Wanli-el raft, Basil stared at his monitor. “Captain, you can’t be serious. Why here? Why me?”
“You’re just too successful, that’s why,” the soprano voice squeaked out.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Come on, Basil, you can talk those catfish into anything. The General will drop off his scientist, then leave, and all’s well. You could even get a medal for it.”
“But Captain—”
The monitor clicked dead.
Basil banged his fist on the table, and one of its legs half folded under. Why now? Sure, Nira’s Gathering went along with things, but lately Basil sensed something cooking; something new was up. Something he might not just talk away this time.
There was good reason why Theo’s company base never had “witnessers” from Basil’s rafts. Natives could find him right here, any time, and he would talk with them round the clock about the Valan army, and why his superiors were inclined to be “sick,” and by the way how were Nira’s darling children doing?
Still, his job was no picnic on Trollbone Point. Those medical “inspections”—what a waste of time and holocubes. Basil had to spend an hour every time just apologizing and humoring the native kids and all, or else lifeshaping tunnels would mysteriously “disappear”; and Captain Theo could come up with only so many creative explanations for that.
It certainly had nothing to do with anything he had learned at Iridis Academy for the Protectoral Guard of Valedon. And this was only his first tour in the field.
Basil pulled back the tent flap and stepped out into a clearing, where the troops were being drilled. Sergeant Cerite insisted on that stuff, although Basil foresaw no conceivable action in which to put it to use. Still, it helped morale and kept the sergeant happy. It also seemed to impress the natives, or at least entertain them; there were always a few of them watching, seated still as if mesmerized.
Basil signaled to the sergeant, and the shouting and stamping came to a halt. “Listen, the general’s coming out tomorrow. I want this place in shape, you hear?” Whatever that meant.
Cerite came over, a thickset man, slightly balding, with shoulders hefty from years of carrying a pack. “General? You don’t mean the Sard?”
“You got it.”
Cerite whistled and shook his head. “And these guys can’t even hold their guns straight. I’ll drill them for the next twelve hours—”
“It’s not the troops he wants to see, it’s the natives.”
“Natives? You mean Nira and her kids?”
“By the way, that’s quite a crowd you’ve got today.” Four or five native watchers were not unusual, but now that he looked, Basil counted over thirty of them—mostly elders, at that.
“I don’t think they’re watching us today. It’s you they’re waiting for, Lieutenant.”
“Me? What’s up?” When Cerite did not answer, Basil walked toward the group of natives until he faced Nira.
“Share the day, Nira.” He spread his hands to show they were empty. This gesture had a great soothing effect on natives. “For what purpose do I share the honor of such esteemed company?”
“A grave problem has arisen.” Nira the Narrowminded was a withered crone, with scars from some seamonster spread across her dusky amethyst skin, and she had as many tricks up her nonexistent sleeve as any village mayor. “A problem to concern all sisters, Sharer and Valan alike. We of Wanli-el shared ignorance of it for some weeks because clickflies were gone.”
A clickfly was sitting on her head now, placidly cleaning its mandibles. Basil felt his skin crawl. Torr be thanked, Nira did not know who had to spread the pesticides. Orders were orders.
“The death-sickness of your Valan sisters at Per-elion has taken a critical turn. It saddens me to share with you what has occurred, not only unprecedented impoliteness and hastening of death, but also a thing so incredible that we don’t have a name for it. It might be best described as a ‘rape’ of the mind.”
The Valan word ‘rape’ was unexpected. “Mind-rape?” Basil shot a questioning glance at the sergeant.
Cerite spat on the raft. “Use your head, Lieutenant. The top brass are Sards.”
Sardish mindbenders—they could extract a man’s will and not leave a mark on him. That’s what they must be doing to the natives at Headquarters. Basil muttered, “No wonder they have riots on their hands.” Then, to Nira, “Listen, I share your distress on this matter. I will send a complaint to the ‘Palace.’”
“Does that mean you will share restraint with your Valan sisters?”
Basil chewed that one over. Already he was regretting a promise which could only get himself in trouble. “You know how it is, Nira. With the general, I can only share will his way.”
Nira said, “The consensus of many Gatherings is that all Valan sisters, who can fly across sky within hours and share speech within seconds, must be considered as one. We at Wanli-el now share that consensus. Therefore, we must Unspeak all Valans so long as unspeakable acts continue anywhere.”
“Unspeak? But the general is coming tomorrow—” Basil broke off, at a loss.
“Then you may share some sense with this ‘general.’ Meanwhile, our Gathering will share Unspeech by sundown. We’re sorry, Basil, but there is nothing more to be said.”
“Wait a minute, what about ‘inspections’?”
“I am sorry, Basil.”
“But ‘inspections’ are essential to our health and well-being. We’ll be ill at our Last Door without ‘inspections.’”
Nira said nothing. That meant it wasn’t going to work this time, though she was too polite to say so. Basil began to sweat. If the lab warrens “disappeared” for good, there would be the devil to pay all round.
He crouched down so that he could face her at eye level. “Nira, we’ve got to work something out here. Haven’t we all been good friends? Didn’t we rescue your cousin’s family in that boat caught in the storm?”
Some of the others stirred as if they might speak. Nira said, “We are very good friends, Basil, and that is why we share this for your own good.”
An idea came to mind. From his pocket Basil pulled out a holocube and showed it to Nira. “Could you conduct the ‘inspection’ yourself, Nira? Just press the red dot on one side and carry the cube throughout the lifeshaping place once a week. Then exchange the cube here, without saying a thing. Then none of us gets into trouble.”
Nira looked down and thought about this awhile. At last she said, “I cannot do this for you. However…I have a granddaughter under twelve who is not yet bound by the Gathering. You may ask her.”
“Thanks, Ni
ra, that’s a great help.” Basil stood up and stretched his legs. “That was a close one, Cerite.”
“It still is, Lieutenant. What are you going to tell the general with his scientist tomorrow?”
“I know what I’d like to tell him.” What was the point of this campaign, anyway? All the scary science stuff—the company medic privately thought it was a con job, cooked up by the Palace as an excuse for invasion. Who could prove where those new purple strains came from? None of Basil’s men were affected, and they practically lived with the natives. And now, this “mind-rape.” That Sardish bastard.
11
“IMPOSSIBLE,” REALGAR SHOUTED when he heard. “We just wiped out the damned insects. And they’re still complaining about a few mindprobed prisoners…”
Within days the new clickflies had multiplied in swarms never seen before. Clouds of them darkened the sky, and they got into everything, tangling in bedding and mess kits, dogging helicopter engines, smashing into windows until the glass streamed with their juices. Insecticide sprayed into the dark clouds precipitated dead husks like black snow, but millions more remained in the sky.
Day by day, a wall of deafness crept inexorably from raft system to raft system, cluster to cluster. All around the globe, natives were shutting their ears and mouths to Valan troops, Iridian and Dolomite alike. Nothing seemed to break that silence, not shouting, beating, imprisoning.
And then the lifeshaping places began to disappear.
“What do you mean, disappear?” he demanded.
“Just that,” said Jade. “Sometimes the tunnels are filled in; or else the walls remain, stripped to bare raftwood, all sign of lifeshaping vanished, even those devilish twisting vines.”
If entire laboratories were disappearing, they had to be rebuilt somewhere, but where, and how so fast?
“Imprison the lifeshapers.”
“That’s fine,” said Jade, “except for those rafts where we never found out who the lifeshapers were.”
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