“Never mind. Now that you’ve got the clickfly code licked, who cares if they talk or not? At least they can’t fraternize with the troops.” The troops were getting to be a problem, he knew. Too many Iridians went soft and carried sob stories back home.
The only problem now was that Siderite was without native informants for the time being. There had to be a “stonesick” lifeshaper somewhere on the globe, and Realgar was sure one would turn up. In the meantime, he thought it would be wise to pay a call on the scientist, to smooth his ruffled feathers after the strike on the lifeshaping places. So he went to visit Siderite in his laboratory.
Siderite stood there between his lab benches, with his hair askew and a black apron over his fatigues. He looked more like a mess cook than anything else, Realgar thought. How absurd that the success of this entire campaign should depend upon such a person. There must be an alternative, Realgar told himself for the hundredth time, but he had yet to find it.
To his relief, Siderite accepted his explanations and apologies with equanimity. Relief turned to suspicion; the man must be holding something back. Had Siderite sent covert aid to the enemy again?
Siderite shrugged absently, and his gaze wandered to the ceiling. “There’s little I can do about it, is there.”
“Of course not. Your understanding is appreciated.”
“It will be hard on them, at swallower season…”
“But there will be no swallowers this season, at least not in inhabited regions.” The House of Aragonite had developed a repellent which would keep the seaswallowers away from all military bases, which meant away from most native raft systems as well. Realgar wondered why the traders had not done so, years earlier. They claimed that the natives disapproved, that they wanted the beasts to come, but that made little sense to him. In fact, it was galling to have to protect natives along with his troops, and he hoped it would not be interpreted as a weakness.
“…they will decentralize all the more,” Siderite was saying. “My guess is, within a few weeks you’ll have ten times as many lab warrens to police as before.”
Realgar’s attention snapped back. “What’s that? Ten times as many?”
“Just a guess, mind you. That’s what I would do, if I were them: scatter little lifeshaping places in holes all over the raft. For that matter, plant a few vines in some of the medium-sized raft seedlings, since the seaswallowers aren’t coming. Leave spare ‘laboratories’ floating all over the place.” Siderite nodded to himself. “Yes, Usha will think of that.”
“What are you saying?” Realgar snapped.
“As it is, every cell of every living raft contains a whole library of all the basic knowledge and skills Sharers possess.”
“A library, in a cell?”
“A chromosome library. Trillions of bits of data on molecular chains, coiled up so small you can’t even see it. In every cell of raftwood. Billions of cells in every raft seedling, each the seed of an entire Sharer life and culture.”
Realgar gripped the lab bench. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Siderite wheeled and shouted at him. “I told you the whole planet was their laboratory! I’d have said a lot more, if I knew what you had in mind. Now get out of my lab and stay out.”
Astonished though he was, Realgar waited. He saw that Siderite’s hands were shaking, and not just from anger. “You can send me back to Iridis for all I care.” Siderite added in an unsteady voice.
The man still feared him, Realgar decided, so he could let the lapse pass. “You will leave when your work is finished, not before.” Realgar turned sharply and left without permitting a reply. A library in every cell of raftwood…What an infernally twisted riddle this planet was.
On a morning two weeks after the lab warrens were hit, Realgar took a hard look at his face in the shaving mirror. It seemed grayer than the usual fair cast of his cheeks and jaw. A jab at the light switch turned the gray to lavender.
His fist crashed on the sink. Of course the breathmicrobes were harmless, the medics insisted over and over. Still, his hand shook as he lifted the razor. Emotions flashed in succession—fear, denial, then a curious sense of release, as if he had yielded something that he had not wanted to win. Then anger washed out everything else. The natives, the damned catfish—they had violated him, in an intensely personal way. His pulse throbbed at his temples, and he breathed slowly for a few minutes to get himself under control.
Realgar turned to the monitor plate on the wall. “Get Doctor Nathan, now.”
The doctor’s voice came on, but he had little help to give. “General, we’ve done the best we can, but nothing works, so far. At Headquarters alone, nine out of ten men are either purple now or on their way to it soon. Not one of our drugs makes a dent in it. I’m sorry, sir.” Nathan sounded decidedly nervous as he finished.
“You mean there’s no cure? How far has it spread?” Realgar demanded.
“To over half the bases. The spores are airborne, so they can’t be contained.”
“And the natives are behind it all.”
Nathan hesitated. “I find it difficult to escape that conclusion, sir. It’s extremely unlikely that a microbe of this type would develop sudden resistance to the entire range of our antibiotics.”
“I’ll burn out a few of those rafts,” Realgar muttered. “I’ll burn them to a cinder.”
“Perhaps…” Nathan’s voice trailed off.
“Speak up, Doctor.”
“As far as the medical problem goes, a more practical approach might be to get the natives to produce an antidote.”
Realgar was floored. “You mean you have no hope of finding a cure?” This might actually get serious. A purple population on Valedon? Unthinkable. Talion would certainly see it that way; he might even quarantine the Ocean Moon.
Then another thought sent a shock down his spine. “The satellites. Are they also…?”
“Some are contaminated, probably all,” said Nathan. “We’ll get rid of it eventually, General. Not overnight, that’s all. It may take Hospital Iridis several years to analyze the strain.”
Realgar was barely listening. He dismissed the doctor and put in a top security call to his private quarters on Satellite Amber. Just in time he ordered the visual transmission corrected for his skin tone.
On his viewing stage, lightshapes sparkled and sprang into form. The peasant-skirted nanny servo huddled the two children into view. They still wore their nightclothes, and their eyes were heavy with sleep, but they giggled and squirmed at the sight of their father. Elmvar waved furiously with both hands. Cassiter clasped her hands demurely, but the ends of her lips curled into an elfin smile. “Papa, what a surprise! Are you coming home, Papa? Oh, please, will you take us hunting when you come?”
“Not yet, Cassi. Just called to see…how you are.” He swallowed the tightness in his throat. Already he saw the lavender tinge in her cheeks, just the faintest trace he used to see in Berenice, before the antibiotic had finished its work. But there was no antibiotic now. How would Cassi react once she realized what was happening to her?
Cassiter pouted “Oh, I’m all right, Papa. Nothing’s new at all. It’s dreadfully boring up here, without you.”
The natives, Realgar thought; they’ve taken my children. My children are hostage to their microbes.
14
FOR MERWEN, DAYS crawled by with still no word from Lystra. Each day her heart died a little, felt a bit emptier, more certain that Lystra’s soul had fled the Last Door and would not come again in the same shape to Raia-el.
The lifeshaping tunnels were rebuilding, slowly. Rafts all over Shora had been hit, but the few lucky ones sent starter cultures by clickfly to everyone in need. And this time Usha built emergency caches into secret places on the raft, to be better prepared for next time.
As Merwen had promised, she took in three stonesick guests, all of whom had been Unspoken by their Gatherings at other rafts and had been sighted at the soldier-place. Shaalrim and Lalor a
lso had moved in, to share the intense care that these guests needed. Often Merwen would stay up with them throughout the night, listening to the endless song of the sea, muffled though it was now with the swamp of overgrown raft seedlings. So long as she stayed close by her sisters, they would stay away from the soldier-place with its gemstones.
On those nights Merwen wondered a thousand times where Lystra was, and where the seaswallowers were, a worry almost as bad as Lystra, for the raft seedlings had to be thinned out, and fleshborers swarmed so thick that one could barely stay in the water. The overcrowded raft seedlings festered and oozed scum that poisoned fish and octopus, while fleshborers devoured what little remained. Then mudworms bloomed and turned the sea brown, without fish to consume them; and fanwings that skimmed the sea for food sickened from the mudworms, until flocks of their bodies drifted on the raft seedlings. The one thing worse than swallower time was the time when swallowers failed to appear.
It turned out that swallowers were traveling northward, after all, but they crowded into narrow lanes, staying hundreds of raft-lengths away from any Valan dwelling. Usha sampled the sea and detected a toxin that repelled seaswallowers.
Merwen was in the silkhouse, reshaping fungal swirls on the wall, when a helicopter came again, hovering and sputtering to a halt outside.
Quickly she sat down with her crippled mother, to reassure her. Ama’s hand pressed hers, just a little. “Think of them, Merwen. I never thought I’d see a sister alive more helpless then myself, yet so often, now, they drop from the sky. It’s hard not to pity them.”
Merwen smiled and thought how a few words from her mother could breed more strength than days of strain wore away.
The Valan death-hasteners came in for Merwen, of course; they never seemed to care for anyone else. As usual she let herself go limp in their grasp, limper even then Ama, who could still flick an eyelid or raise a hand to her dear ones. For the Unspoken Valans, Merwen would make no sign at all with her body, neither to help nor hinder. What use was it, when they could not touch her soul?
Still, it could do her own body no good to be bumped across the raft and into the dead machine until welts swelled all over. Nor was it any better for her soul to be hauled off as if worth no more than a netful of fish. She had to remember, always, that she was in the hands of unfortunates, but the effort drained her will.
Where would she end up this time? The shell of dank, rotting stone? Instead, she found herself in the place of Realgar the wordweaver again, for the first time since Unspeech had begun. Merwen relaxed a bit; the visit was bound to be brief, since she could say nothing. Next to him, though, stood the blond one who committed atrocities against the mind. In both their faces the purple microbes bloomed, and Merwen wondered what that signified. Would the death-hasteners plumb new depths of madness, even as Trurl had warned?
Someone else, in a dusty yellowish blanket, waved arms at her. “Merwen! It’s me; I came back, Merwen, to troubleshare again.”
She reeled at the voice. Not Spinel, not here. Had Spinel fallen sick too?
“It’s me, Merwen. Don’t you know me?” With a flurry of movement the garment was loosed and tossed in the air. Spinel was free after all, as alive as Merwen’s own daughters. She rushed to embrace him, until the soldiers pulled them apart, and her bruises throbbed anew.
“Enough,” said Realgar, with a glance at jade. Jade’s metal stick touched Spinel.
Spinel’s eyes rolled from the pain, then he tottered and half collapsed. He picked up the blanket again and dragged it over his head, his face a picture of misery.
His pain stung Merwen far worse than her own. Spinel was more than her own daughter; he was a Valan child who had placed himself freely in her hands, her last bright hope for a oneness of Valan and Sharer. Spinel was purple by choice, and the day he had made the choice, Merwen had pledged her life against his pain.
Spinel’s throat dipped as he swallowed. “It’s…not so bad, Merwen.”
Merwen’s eyes fell, overcome with the anguish and yet the joy that Spinel was here again as a Sharer. Even his starstone and plumage were that of Uriel, not altogether a bad thing. Deliberately she seated herself on the floor to compose her mind, as if for a Gathering. Spinel glanced at the soldiers, then sat before her.
“Spinel, I want to know,” said Realgar, “how long Merwen and the other Protectors plan to flout our rule.”
Spinel swallowed again. “He wants to know how long you plan to…not share will.”
“Spinel, we may not concern ourselves with what the Unspoken ask to know.”
“But I have to, or it hurts,” Spinel blurted.
Merwen realized that the young Valan did not know whitetrance and could not control his pain at all. It dawned on her, then: without whitetrance, no Valans could properly control their own pain.
She had always known they lacked whitetrance, but she had never drawn this connection. Conscious beings were meant to control pain, to say yes or no to their physical selves, else how could their souls be freed?
“One more chance, Spinel,” Realgar warned.
“Please, Merwen—”
“Since you ask, Spinel, we will of course resist until Valans leave or share healing.” Valans grew old without learning whitetrance; no wonder they were ill.
“Does she realize,” said Realgar, “that many more sisters will die?”
“Do you realize that others will die?” Spinel said hollowly.
“Sharers have died, physically, since the beginning of time.”
“But deaths will be hastened,” Realgar added. “Does Merwen wish to have that on her conscience? Does she know that we have her daughter?”
Spinel said, “Do you know Lystra’s here? I spoke with her, but she still shares anger with me.”
Lystra, alive still. Merwen’s hope soared on wings, then plummeted. Lystra, in a stone cell, all this time. “Is she well?”
“No, she’s—” Pain from the metal stick twisted his face once more.
Despite herself Merwen shut her eyes hard. “Spinel, this place makes me tired. Why don’t you come home with me?” If only Spinel would come home so Usha could share with him the way to hold pain in his fingerwebs. No, he had no fingerwebs, but he did have a soul, and that made all the difference.
“Enough nonsense,” said Realgar. “The breathmicrobes. Tell her to get rid of them, or else.”
Spinel said, “He wants you to chase out the breathmicrobes.”
Merwen opened her eyes again and considered this. “A sad wish, Spinel. If Valans intend to live in our ocean, surely they wish to swim as well as possible.”
“Spinel, Merwen knows what Valans think of breathmicrobes, and we know where this new strain came from.”
Spinel said, “He thinks you made the breathmicrobes to resist Valan medicines.”
“Usha did make the strain,” Merwen said. “It escaped from her collection when our tunnels were destroyed.”
“Then she can get rid of it,” Realgar insisted.
“He still doesn’t want to share it, Merwen.”
The request was fair enough, Merwen thought. Suppose she offered a “cure,” if Spinel were to be freed, and Lystra…No, that would mean trading threats, a sick thing to do. She must offer to share the “cure” outright, hard though it was to think of breathmicrobes as an illness to be cured.
Before she responded, Realgar said, “Tell her to get rid of the strain, if she values her children.”
Spinel’s mouth opened. “Your—your daughters, Merwen,” he stuttered. “Something will happen.”
Her heart sank. A threat had been made; it was too late to be generous. “Lystra is a selfnamer,” she said calmly.
“Her younger daughters,” Realgar corrected. “And all the children of Sharers everywhere.”
“I think he means Weia and Wellen.” Spinel barely forced the words out.
“I hear you, Spinel.” There was a pause, expanding as if to fill the room. Merwen stretched herself, her back
straightened, and her breasts lifted. “Do you know for what reason sisters become Unspoken? It is because they cry for demands which would only hurt them most.”
Realgar leaned forward across his desk. “This is no riddle game. You are ruthless, Protector: you stop at nothing, even infecting our own children. Very well. Every Sharer child age two to twelve will be held as security until something cures this plague.”
Spinel said nothing, but sat like a stone.
“Go on, Spinel. Every native child age two to twelve.”
Still he said nothing. A shriek split the room; Spinel’s eyes stood out from the sockets, his body collapsed and curled up on the floor.
“I hear, Spinel,” Merwen whispered, sensing the defeat into which Spinel had unwittingly trapped her.
“Much better. You’re talking sense at last.” Realgar nodded to Jade, who replaced the stick at her belt. “What do you say, Protector? Twenty-four hours to think it over?”
Her eyes widened with a new idea. “I will do something else for Valans, Spinel, something they all need, very badly; for this, I would share speech again. I will share with them the whitetrance to govern pain.”
This only seemed to infuriate Realgar all the more. “You still dare to flaunt your illegally deathblocked minds? What kind of a selfnamer are you? Do you think nothing of your own children?”
“I am a very poor selfnamer, Spinel. I lose patience too quickly. Perhaps my daughters will share more understanding with Valan children than I do.”
Spinel was sobbing quietly on the floor, his starstone swung out from his neck.
“No grace period,” said Realgar curtly. “Your children are forfeit.”
The soldiers hauled her out, without waiting for her to turn white.
Realgar was surprised and gratified at how well Talion’s stratagem had worked. That young Spirit Caller really was a key to the heart of Protector Merwen, her first significant weakness that Realgar had discerned.
But he would have to follow through with taking the children. Though it was stretching the letter of the Code, which allowed hostages to be taken only from key officials, he could fall back on the official Sharer claim that all their adults were equal Protectors under their own law. To take their children—an ingenious move: he wondered why he had not thought of it before. It would not be long before some one of those mothers cured the Plague.
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