Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “Was that Doctor Okoyo?” Bassander asked, cocking his head to one side. “I sent her to the Mistral not three hours ago.”

  “Overseeing the transfer of the last few Norman fugue patients,” I said quickly. “Otavia sent her with me since I was coming over. I’ll drop her off before I ferry over to the Pharaoh for the freeze.”

  This seemed to satisfy Bassander, who shrugged his lips and straightened his wide uniform belt—from which hung the hilt of Admiral Whent’s old sword along with the Commodore’s customary sidearm. Or, the captain’s sidearm, that was. He’d donned his blacks again, like the legionnaires in the bay, and so our martial dream was ended, or would end soon.

  “But what are you here for, Bassander?” I asked, trying to gather crucial information. He should have been safely away on the Pharaoh, not just down the hall from where my friends labored to steal away his prized prisoner.

  The captain let out a long sigh. “Came to oversee the last round of shuttles separating the Normans from the rest of us. It seemed the proper thing to do.”

  Jinan cut in, “Alessandro told me you had Switch take away your things?” She touched my arm, moving close enough that she eclipsed Bassander. It was a question, asked as if she could not quite believe it was so.

  “Yes,” I breathed, looking up at her. “I was just on my way to grab a couple things he missed. Um . . .” The tallness of her was like the last glass of wine in a lonely bottle. I drank her in and might have cried, were it not for the hard captain with his flint-eyed gaze. “We’re separating, aren’t we? Once we return to Coritani?” I directed the question over her shoulder to where Bassander stood.

  His blacks matched the black of the hall. He might have been a piece of hardware and not a man at all. “We’ll have to parley with the Jaddian satrap, but I imagine so, yes. Unless we receive orders concerning the intelligence we recovered from The Painted Man.” He kept his attentions fixed on a point firmly over my shoulder as he spoke. Was it embarrassment?

  No. Frowning, I peered round Jinan’s shoulder at the Mandari legionnaire. It was shame. Whatever else he was, Bassander was not blind. He knew the consequences of his choice, knew what he had done to Jinan and myself and what love there was between us. My eyes flickered to Jinan’s, found her watching me intently. I knew that face, knew the light in those eyes moved as much for pity as mine moved to scorn. And a piece of me broke and was ashamed. Ashamed for how I had acted in council: with anger and disgust at these people who would not hear me. And ashamed for what I was about to do.

  “It’s all right, Bassander,” I said, words slow to come. “You only did—you’re doing what you think is right.” Saying this, I focused all my soul on Jinan and said, “That’s all any of us can ever do.”

  Did she know I was saying good-bye?

  “I appreciate your saying that, Lord Marlowe,” he said, sounding much much older than I—which indeed he was. “I will keep my word, I’ll do all I can to see you’re not returned to Emesh and the . . . ah . . .” He glanced at Jinan and—I swear it by all the Memory of Earth—a flush crept up his neck. Stammering, he finished, “The Mataro girl. Though . . . do you really think she’s still waiting for you? It’s been decades.”

  “I’d rather not risk it.” Eyes shut against the embarrassment that ran down my neck, I said, “Do what you must.” Then, “Thank you.” I opened my eyes again. Jinan was looking at me with a strange expression on her face, lips raised and pressed together, as if bemused and troubled all at once to find us so agreeable. To her I said, “We’ll have to talk at Coritani?” I made it a question so it was not a lie.

  “Yes,” she said, and the word was more breath than sound. Her fingers tightened on my arm. I kissed her, and kissing her . . . betrayed her, for it was the last kiss we ever shared—though it promised more. We broke apart, and she said, “Love you, mia qal.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong,” I said, echoing her. I couldn’t say that I loved her, too. It felt too much like lying, after that treasonous kiss. Mustering a little bravura to cover the screaming in my heart, I swaggered back. “Dream of me while you’re frozen, my captain,” I said.

  She made a face, and grinning said, “I never do.”

  If we exchanged more words, I cannot recall them. In my mind, I simply turn and enter the cubiculum. I have no memory of the long walk up the hall, nor of the cares I must have taken to ensure I was not followed. Strange what the mind abridges, strange what it retains, and stranger still what it invents. Mythologizes. I feel sure that I did not look back at Jinan and the captain where they stood in that hall. I remember being afraid to do so, fearing that some shadow in my face might betray me as I betrayed them. And yet clearly I can see my captain standing there, tall and noble as a Chantry bronze—still wearing her reds, our reds. It is one of the peculiarities of my soul that when I think of Jinan it is to that moment I must go first, and so work either backward through our bliss and our toils . . . or forward to the heartache beyond our end.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE TOMB

  THE COLD SHOCKED ME to myself. Thin fingers of mist like the arms of phantasms snaked out into the hall. Crim and Switch were on me at once, drew back at once when they saw it was me. Siran and the Norman trooper stood guard at the door opposite, leaving Doctor Okoyo to fuss over the huge storage crèche that housed the Cielcin.

  “This is the one, yes?” she asked, keying her way through a sequence of prompts on a panel on the side of the crate.

  Shrugging into my coat properly, I squinted at the name stenciled in red on its side. “Yes.” I set the heavy mantle down and went to the bank of drawers fixed to the wall opposite the sleeping fugue crèches. On their feet, the Cielcin ranged from seven to nine feet tall, and so no human crèche could hold them. The eleven sepulchers that stood at intervals along the arc of that curving theater might have carried a bull auroch to some new colony. Finding the drawer I wanted, I drew it out and set it on the floor. Within was a sort of black jumpsuit of some rubbery material and a set of loose-fitting dark robes. At a strange look from Siran, I said, “Tanaran’s clothes.”

  “Blood’s mixing,” the doctor said in her Norman clip. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Quite sure,” I said. I wasn’t. I had no idea how Tanaran would react. It was no fighter, not like Uvanari had been, nor like any of these others slumbering in this hold. But for a moment I felt a hint of Bassander’s trepidation, I think. His defensive coil against the strangeness of these beings. “But doctor, the minute this thing unseals I want you to step back. Switch, keep a bead on the Cielcin, will you? I don’t know how it might react to the thaw.”

  Being mostly water, organic tissue does not like to freeze. The crystallization of water in the blood has the potential to damage the delicate structure of organs and tissues, to break blood vessels and tear arteries. And yet the long years and decades of star travel are too long to face conscious, lest all but the most high among the palatine burn their lives in transit. And so the blood had to be cycled out, replaced with the TX9, which did not freeze as it cooled. Most tanks performed the task automatically, cycling the suspension fluid out, draining the body and the space in the surrounding tank before pumping the blood back in as the body warmed. I merited special attention from the medical officer only because of my high station. It dramatically reduced the risk of cryoburn.

  “Draining the tank,” Okoyo said, hitting a switch on the side of the crèche. A ring of blue light glowed around one of the hoses that snaked away from the box and toward a reservoir for sterilization. That would be the suspension fluid. Arms crossed, I stalked just behind the doctor where she crouched at her ministrations, awaiting my cue like an actor hanging in the wings.

  “How long?” Siran asked from her place by the far door.

  Okoyo bit her lip. “I’m not sure. I don’t usually work with these sorts of tanks. I’m used to people.” She fiddled with another set
of controls. “Temperature’s rising steadily. Starting TX9 drain now.” But before she pressed the final button, she turned to me. “Are we sure this will work? Their biology is different, and not cow different.”

  My eyes darted to the doors, as if I half-expected Bassander to burst in with an inquisition at any moment. At length I shook my head, shrugging my arms tighter against the cold. “I’ve no idea. Not for certain. They weren’t afraid going in, so they must have some comparable technology, but . . .” I left the rest unspoken. I could only hope the technology worked as well on xenobites as it did on livestock. I knew that in the Empire there were circus troops and scholiasts and men of stranger professions who carried non-terranic life forms on their ships. On Emesh the Count’s vilicus had spoken of a plan to transplant thousands of the native Umandh population to another world for labor purposes, and I knew others of the coloni races were transported between human worlds for the amusement of the wealthy. They had to be transported somehow across the dark years between the stars.

  “I’m sure the Legion medtechs did everything at their disposal to keep the Pale alive,” I said.

  “It is alive,” Okoyo replied, pointing at a set of small panels. “I’m just not sure I can keep it that way.”

  It seemed an odd time to be making that particular comment, given that she had already drained the suspension fluid and was cycling the TX9 out for blood. I needed a moment to understand. “I don’t doubt your abilities, doctor. I know you haven’t done this before.” Frost crunched beneath my feet as I crossed to her and, stooping, pressed the button to begin pumping blood back into the Cielcin’s body myself.

  Red indicators began cycling blue with a series of faint chimes. I helped Okoyo to her feet, rehearsing my first words in my head. It had been a long time since I’d needed the alien tongue, and I was afraid of what I’d sound like.

  You speak like a child. That was what the first Cielcin I had ever met said to me. Nietolo ti-coie luda. Like a child. I didn’t feel like a child. I felt old. Aged as only a traitor can be. My mind wandered beyond the edges of that frigid room and out across our little fleet. To Valka, wherever she was, aiding our little misadventure. To Bassander, clueless, I hoped. To Jinan, whom I’d betrayed. To Otavia and Ilex and the others waiting on the Mistral for our return. To Pallino, Elara, and the others I would leave behind. I felt at once like one of the necromancers out of antique myth, standing above the coffin of some revenant plucked back from the void. That put me in mind of my words to The Painted Man, from Shelley.

  Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but you are solitary and abhorred. This wasn’t going to be easy on the xenobite, alone among us humans. Stranger in a strange land. Pneumatics hissed, whined with recharge as the great lid of the fugue crèche was lifted up and hinged backward. Acrid vapors snaked in the cold air, smelling of antiseptic and machine oil. Under normal circumstances, the doctor ought to have approached, to check the pulse and pupil response of her patient. I did not blame Okoyo for hanging back.

  Behind me, I could sense the coiled tension in Switch and Crim, their phase disruptors raised and set to stun. Siran’s face and that of the nameless soldier beside her were white and drawn as corpses. I realized suddenly that I alone of all that group had been down in the tunnels at Calagah. I alone had been in Castle Borosevo and the Chantry bastille below its walls for the long interrogation and the inquest into the crash on Emesh. I alone had spoken with Uvanari and with Tanaran itself. Not Switch, not Siran, and certainly none of the Normans had ever seen a Cielcin in the flesh.

  It was no wonder they were scared.

  So I could not afford to be.

  “Fear is a poison,” I murmured beneath hearing, the words smoking in the cold air, and brushed past the Norman doctor. There was a faint violet color to the smokes rising from the crèche, and through them I could see the slick grayness of the crèche’s interior. It reminded me of the paper egg cartons I have seen in marketplaces from Marinus to Jadd, wet with the undrained slime of the suspension fluid, like the snot of some fell beast. And in the center of it all—naked and dripping and pierced by several needled cords—the body of the alien. Corpse white it was, the flesh shining and bloated as if it were many days drowned and fit to burst. Yet it was thin and hard, a creature of sinew and bone, claw and horn and hide. Its long white hair—sprouting from the back of its head like a Mandari queue—was soaked and tangled beneath its crown of snarling horns. Reaching down past the lip of the crate, I peeled a sensor tape off its neck and felt for a pulse.

  There it was. Faint but growing stronger as both hearts began to beat.

  Ta-tum ta-tum.

  “It’s alive,” I said, and moving drew the long tube from its mouth. I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster I had brought with us—and my young heart filled with the milk of pity and of guilt. I said again, “It’s alive.” Everything that happened to it next was because of me, and I’d set its feet on no easy road. Heedless of the purplish slime on its face, I lay a hand there, feeling the slow blossoming of warmth as the black blood piped into its veins.

  Ta-tum ta-tum.

  “Is it awake?” Crim asked.

  “It’s dreaming,” Okoyo replied. “The mind still has to reorient.”

  The muscles of the inhuman face hung slack in sleep. Its eyes shut, lips parted, it might have been a human face—carved as it were of alabaster or ivory—were it not for the absent nose. Something in the lines of its face put me in mind of those mad Italians who, by the dawn light of history, cut into corpses to understand the musculature. An artist myself, I wondered at the similarities between its face and mine: that Evolution should—beneath two separate suns—contrive two forms so alike and yet so estranged. What chance or powers had moved our two species to so similar a form I could not then guess, but I wondered, and wondering traced my thumb against the sharp line of Tanaran’s cheekbone. I imagined there was a kinship between us, as if Life shared a common ancestry with Life—as indeed is the case for all terranic life forms. I ignored our differences out of necessity and the necessary idealism of youth. I needed to ignore them, and so imagined that it was Humanity I saw in the inhuman lines of its face.

  It jerked as if electrocuted and I yanked my hand away. Behind me, the others all gasped, and I heard at least one stunner ping as it was primed. Switch’s, at a guess. With a wet and rattling gasp the Cielcin lurched, trying to find its feet—its knees. Tanaran scrabbled instead and collapsed, pulling at the tubes that still fed its blood like ink beneath the wrinkled paper of its skin.

  “Paiwarete,” I breathed, laying hands on its arm and shoulder. “Careful now.” I spoke its language softly, almost crooning. “You’ve been asleep a long time.”

  It pawed around blindly, hand finding my elbow, my shoulder, the front of my shirt. Hard fingers closed on my tunic, and it pulled me down. “Yukajji-do,” it said, looking around. Its black eyes opened, large as my fist, and cast about the cubiculum. It took in Okoyo and the others before at last settling on my own face. “Hadrian.”

  “Yes,” I said, still softly. “It’s me.”

  “Is it the day?” it asked, raising its upper lip to show those horrible, glassy teeth. “Aranata? Did you find . . . my . . . master?”

  I had thought long about what I would say to Tanaran when I awakened it. Nothing seemed sufficient, given the circumstances. One thing alone was clear: there was very little time, and the truth—in my experience—is always a long story. So too are lies. “Namne deshu civaqeto ti-zahem gi,” I said.

  “When we get where?” it asked.

  “Can you stand?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  When at last it found its feet, Tanaran stooped over me, leaning on my shoulder, naked and covered in slime. It showed no particular shame at its undress—neither had Uvanari in the throes of its torture—and not for the
first time I wondered if the xenobites had a nudity taboo. And why should they? The Cielcin were hermaphrodites, and had no special modesty to hide from one another as we.

  Extending a hand to Okoyo, I said, “Towel.” She tossed one to me rather than handed it. I could see the whites in her eyes, like she was a racehorse spooked by some uncommon noise. Tanaran understood implicitly what the towel was for, and began to wipe itself off. “There isn’t very much time,” I said seriously. “I need you to come with us.”

  “Iagami mnu ti-perem ne?” it asked. Where are we going?

  “To another ship,” I said tersely, pointing it toward the drawer I’d removed that held its clothes. “I’ll explain once we’re there.”

  If it understood at all what the urgency in my voice meant, it gave no sign, only continued to wipe the violet slime from its pale limbs with the rag. Presently it stopped, cast about the cubiculum, taking in the crèches where lay interred the others of its kind. It swayed there, narrow as a reed. “What about the others?” it asked, turning to look straight down at me.

  I rolled my head in rough approximation of the gesture the Cielcin use to signal no. “Usayu okun.” Just you.

  “You are taking me to torment,” it said, “like you took the captain.”

  I had nothing to say to that. There was nothing I could say. Except, “Get dressed.”

  Crim and Switch led the way, with myself and the hooded Cielcin close behind. The black halls had transformed themselves while we tarried in the cubiculum. I kept my hand on my shield-belt beneath my coat, shoulders tensed as if expecting at any minute a knife might plunge between them. But it was only Siran and the doctor behind me.

  “The lift’s just ahead,” I said, speaking to the Cielcin. “Keep your head down.” The hall was lower than the cubiculum had been, and Tanaran stooped as it followed on.