Tepper,Sheri - After Long Silence

by After Long Silence(Lit)

  It took most of the afternoon working with synthesizer and computer, trying permutations of a few phrases that seemed likely, to come up with a new score on the music box that quieted things down very nicely. It was a fairly simple variation of a score she knew well, one she felt competent to use in singing herself through the range—just as a test, and certainly not something that was required of an Explorer—and it was early evening when she started.

  The way she chose was a narrow ledge along a towering face and above a sheer drop into a gorge of living crystal. The gorge gleamed with amber and hot orange lights through its generally winey mass. All the Redfang Range was bloody, as evil looking in its way as the Enigma, though a whole lot simpler to get through. Her narrow ledge wouldn't do as a trip-trail, but it would serve to get her into the deepsoil pocket, after which she would find some way out that wagons could travel. As she sang her way along the ledge, she told herself that hell must look much like the gorge below her. The lower the sun dropped, the more it looked as though it were on fire.

  She didn't hurry during the transit. Afterward she realized it was entirely likely that someone had followed her from the peril-point. Certainly that someone knew something about Tripsinging, for the attack came at precisely that moment when she moved out of peril. A black clad, black masked form, barely visible in the dusk, came from slightly to one side and behind her.

  If it hadn't been that she turned just at that moment in response to some tiny sound; if it hadn't been that the sun glinted on the knife blade as she turned, she would not have seen her attacker at all.

  As it was, she dropped without thought, rolled, pulled up her legs to protect her belly and her arm to protect her throat, felt a moment's searing pain along the arm, kicked up and out with both legs, and saw the figure soar over her into the air above the gorge. She had reacted without thought, reacted as she had been taught, as she had practiced a thousand times in the self-defense courses that, since the Jut Massacre, all Explorers had had to take over and over again.

  The weapon clattered onto the ledge, but the attacker fell endlessly, without a sound.

  For a short time after that, Don was so busy applying emergency care to her gashed arm that she had no time to wonder about the attacker. When the bleeding was stanched, she huddled over a tiny fire, terrified that the assassin might not have been alone. Then, when no further assault came, she began to wonder why she had been attacked at all.

  At first light she had attempted to climb to the place the body lay, so far below as to be virtually invisible. If she could find out who, she might find out the reason.

  After an hour or two, she gave up. Someone might get into the gorge with a parachute or a balloon. They would not get out again.

  Since then it had remained a mystery. Someone had tried to kill her. She didn't know who, and she wasn't sure why. Not a torture killing like Gretl's; nothing weird about it; just a straightforward attempt at murder!

  A Crystallite assassin? That's why Explorers studied self-defense, after all, because of the threat posed by fanatics. It could have been. In which case, the intended victim might not have been Don Furz particularly, but simply any Explorer. However, Crystallite assassins were said to scream religious slogans during attacks. Certainly they had done so during the Jut Massacre and in several other assassinations since. This person, male or female, had been silent.

  Was it someone who knew what Don had found out? One of those twenty the Explorer King had mentioned? Then how had he or she found out? What did they know?

  Was it someone from BDL?

  What would her trusted friend think about it? She had been unable to pass the word along until yesterday.

  Now she realized the doctor was looking at her oddly, obviously wondering at her long preoccupation. "I was just trying to figure out some way to have the scar removed now," she said to explain her abstraction. "But it can't be done. There just isn't time. Other than the scar, how am I?"

  "You're thirty-three years old, in perfect health, in beautiful shape, with no evidence of any disease whatsoever. You've got the muscles of a stevedore and the reaction time of a prime jetball ace. What else can I tell you? Here's a copy of the report. The duplicate will be placed in your record." He cocked his head and looked at her quizzically.

  Don grinned. No matter how often she told herself it was foolish, she always approached the annual medical exam with the suspicion it would find her in some lingering illness. Each time, the report relieved her anxiety, and she took the copy now with a sense of reprieve.

  She called Fyne Blanchet from a booth in the lobby of the medical building.

  "I made a lunch date for you with your elderly relative," he said. "She's a little hard of hearing, so I hope she got it straight."

  "When and where, Blanchet?"

  "Thirteen hundred at the Fish House on Bayside Street. She told me, among many other things, that she doesn't eat red meat."

  "Who can afford red meat? I can't." Pasture land was strictly limited on Jubal, and red meat was the epitome of luxury. Fowl was more usual. Fish, more common yet.

  "I'm waiting for a call back from your niece, and Link Emert would love to have cocktails with you after work. He says seventeen hundred at the 'Ling Lounge, just down the block from his office."

  "Fine. I'll check back with you after lunch."

  Lunch at the Fish House was as predictable as any meal with Cyndal. Close inspection of the menu to determine whether there was anything on it she could not eat. Each such item read aloud. Querulous inquiry into the morals of anyone who would eat said item. Further finicky attention given to ordering copiously from among items that she could eat. And, finally, greedy consumption of said items, right down to the polish on the plate, while discoursing upon the flavor of every mouthful.

  If anyone had an ear trained on Cyndal, Don hoped they enjoyed the experience.

  "Very nice, Donatella. Very generous of you. What do you hear from your dear mother?"

  "Just the usual, Cousin Cyndal. She's still greatly involved with the local gardening group there in Deepsoil Twelve. She asked to be remembered to you."

  "Such a lovely woman, your mother."

  Donatella, who had quite another view of her parent, smiled and said nothing. When she left the restaurant, the waiter came running after her with her bag, which she, as usual, had forgotten.

  "Blanchet? Did you get hold of Fabian?"

  "Dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow, whichever you prefer."

  "Oh, make it dinner tonight. Then I'll have the morning to sleep in and luxuriate before starting back to Northwest. Tell her—tell her to pick a place and I'll meet her there at twenty hundred. I'm going to do some shopping before I meet Link Emert. Thanks, Blanchet."

  When she arrived at the 'Ling Lounge, she found Link already ensconced behind a table, his mobile chair hidden by it. Link usually arrived early in order to make his disability less apparent.

  "Donatella!" He half rose, pushing up with his arms to give the appearance of someone with legs that worked, then seated himself again to reach out for her hand. She did not lean down to kiss him. He had been very explicit about the pain that caused him, so she didn't do it. Also, her hair was flattened and drawn back severely and she was wearing a not very becoming suit that made her legs and torso shapeless.

  "I don't want to want you anymore," he had said to her once, the words hissing out between clenched teeth. "Don't you understand, Don! It hurts to want you. It hurts to want anything!"

  So, she looked as unwantable as possible, within the bounds of what might be acceptable in a place with the effrontery to call itself the 'Ling Lounge. Predictably, it was decorated with phoney 'lings, plastic crystals that reached from floor to ceiling. Variations on Tripsinger themes pounded from speakers. "Interesting place," she said, gesturing with disdain. "How long has this been here?"

  "Oh, less than a year. It's an appalling tourist trap, plain and simple, but the drinks are good."

  "Touris
ts! Lord. That's a word I'd read about but never thought to hear in Jubal, Link. Tourists!"

  "More of them all the time, Don. There's even some guy down in Bay City who advertises interior trips for tourists, with Tripsingers and the whole score."

  "He's out of his mind!"

  "No. He takes them out by the Deadheads, sings them through with some mish mash, then gives them a look at the Crazies, 'accidentally' blows up a Crazeling or two, and brings the tourists back all agog. They think they've been in peril."

  "And he makes it with both hands."

  "So I hear. What are you drinking, Donatella, my love? It's been almost year since I've seen you, you know that?" He said "my love" casually, as though it didn't matter, but her heart turned over at the words, as it always had. He was thinner. His eyes were sunken. That once glowing face looked pallid. Even his lips were colorless. She shook herself and smiled, pretending not to see.

  They ordered drinks. They talked. Little things. Inconsequentialities. Recent explorations. Link's work as Explorer liaison to the Governor's office. The recent announcement that the CHASE Commission was coming to Jubal.

  "What the hell is the CHASE Commission?" she asked.

  "The Planetary Exploitation Council has set up a new commission to decide once and for all whether there is sentient native life on Jubal."

  "Oh, I did know about it. I just didn't remember the name. The services man talked about it last night. And somebody mentioned it at that reception I came down for, last time I was here in town." Donatella's real reason for coming to Splash One had occupied her mind to such an extent that she had been barely able to focus on social rituals. "As I recall on that occasion I forgot who the Governor's wife was and introduced her to someone as Gereny Vox."

  "Donatella!" He sounded genuinely shocked. By no stretch of resemblance could the well-known mule breeder be compared in either face or figure to Honeypeach Thonks. Gereny was a completely genuine, if rough-edged, person of considerable charm. Lady Honeypeach was a self-created and ominous device.

  "It was just a slip of the tongue. I knew right away I'd got it wrong, and I apologized all over the place. She was very sweet about it, in a poisonous way." Don laughed unconvincingly. It had been a horrible gaffe, one she'd heard about later from the Explorer King and one that, in its way, had perhaps helped to obscure what else she might have been doing in Splash One. "Well, how are they going to go about deciding the sentience question?"

  "They're going to hold hearings in a few weeks, just as they did fifty years ago, what else?"

  "Remind me what CHASE stands for."

  "The Commission on Humans and Alien Sentience: Exploitation."

  "Are they going to try to prove human sentience first?" She choked with laughter. "I've had some question about that recently. I have a few nominees for no sentience at all, starting with the Governor."

  "Hush, child. You make treasonous utterance. The Governor's stepson is chairman of the commission. Ymries Fedder. He named the commission, I understand."

  "Oh, yes. Honeypeach's son." It seemed appropriate to say nothing more, and she contented herself with quirking one eyebrow at Link. He quirked back and she sighed. As always, they understood each other precisely. As always, she ached to hold him. As always, she mourned for him, longed for him. And as always, she kept a cheerful face and let none of it show. He had been in that chair for five years, ever since the trip on which an unexplored Presence blew with Link directly in the way. He should have died, would have died except for Don. Afterward he had accused her of sentencing him to life imprisonment, and she had offered to help him out of it. No Explorer could do less, no lover more. The offer still stood. He had not taken her up on it yet. Thank God.

  And as always when she saw him, her mind went frantic, trying to think of a way for a rather minor employee of the Department of Exploration to lay hands on something like a hundred thousand chits. Which is roughly what it would cost to get Link to Serendipity and pay for regeneration of his legs. Half that amount would import a set of bio-prostheses, which would at least let him walk!

  No sense thinking about it. She'd thought about it before. Ten years' salary. Damn BDL and their priorities! Brou first, everything else second. And the Explorer Kings, who should be fighting for medical care as part of the contract, seemed content to piddle around with the amenities package. She kept her face calm, crying inside.

  Two hours went by and she looked at the comp on her wrist. "Got to run, Link. In one hour I've got a date with my niece, remember her? Fabian? With the Planetary Welfare Office."

  "I saw Fabian just last week. She came into the Governor's office for something or other … what was it? Oh, I remember. She's working on a settlement plan for the fringe people who get left behind when various military personnel are transferred out-system."

  "Fringe people?"

  "Ah … what shall we say. Unofficial dependents. Uncontracted spouses. The troopers bring them in. Then when they ship out, they decide for one reason or another to go unencumbered."

  "Unofficial divorce."

  "In a manner of speaking. Kids, too, of course."

  "Bastards," she said, with feeling. "Link. Thanks for the drinks." She took his hand in her own, casually, squeezed it, only for a moment, smiled and rose.

  "Donatella!" He called her back. "You forgot your bag."

  She returned to the Chapter House to shower and change her clothes, entering by the back door and slipping up the stairs when no one was watching, not furtively, simply as though in a hurry. She had no particular wish to explain her unattractive garb to anyone, least of all Blanchet. By the time he arrived with the drink she ordered, she was showered and dressed for dinner, albeit less spectacularly than on the previous night.

  "Did you have good visits with your friends?"

  "Cousin Cyndal is not really a friend," she confessed with every semblance of candor. "Cousin Cyndal is a pain in the downspout. However, if I don't see her when I'm here, my mother doesn't let me forget it. Seeing Link Emert is also a pain, of a different kind. I keep remembering him the way he was before the accident."

  "Ah." Blanchet was sympathetic. "Well, you'll enjoy the evening more, perhaps."

  "Oh, Lord," she replied, "I hope so. It's always good to see Fabian. She's fun."

  And Fabian was. She told stories of the "fringe people" that made Don alternately laugh and cry; made outrageous conversation with the waiters who delivered their crisp cooked vegetables, wonderfully flavored with strips of broiled fish and fowl; and ended the evening in reminiscences and general conversation. As they left the restaurant, Don said, "Damn, I forgot my bag again," and Fabian laughed. "You always have, every time I've ever been with you, so I picked it up for you. Here."

  And back to her room again, duty done. Same procedure with the purse as last night. It was the first chance she had had.

  The note was in the bag. Under the bedcovers she read the tiny letters.

  "Note received. Terree's brother, Tasmin Ferrence, said to be on way to 'Soilcoast. Has music box. I will contact. Careful."

  And the curvy line that made the signature. Chain, or CHAIN, if one wanted to be accurate. The investigative and enforcement arm of the PEC, that was CHAIN. Donatella spent a futile moment wishing that CHAIN was indeed present on Jubal, in force, rather than merely represented by one fairly powerless former employee.

  Back to the note. Careful. What did that mean? Careful. Of course she was careful.

  Still, the single word appended to the note made her uneasy. Instead of falling immediately asleep as she usually did—as all Explorers did if they wished to be properly concentrated on each day's task—she squirmed restlessly in the noisy dark, staring at the lights from the saloon-cum-amusement park across the street. Refracted through the beveled glass of her windows, the lights made red-purple lines across her bed. There were the sounds of a crowd outside, little muffled by the closed windows. The bustle of people moving along the avenue, shouts of revelry and of annoyan
ce, replies, laughing or threatening or haranguing. Like those fanatics. She remembered the burning Crystallite, eyeballs crisping through a curtain of fire, and set the thought aside with a shudder. Think of something else. Think of Link. Link with his face so carefully controlled. No accusations. Not for years. And yet she would be lying to herself if she thought he had adapted.

  Of course he hadn't. He was still the same Link, trapped, trapped forever, and she as trapped without him.

  If only. If only she had a hundred thousand chits. If only she could get a hundred thousand chits. He deserved it. BDL owed it to him.

  She could not rest. She was not even sleepy. If she had been even drowsy, she might not have heard the sound, so tiny a noise, a click where a click didn't belong.

  At the window in the bathroom. Opening on an airshaft, as she recalled. Three stories up.

  She did not wait for the click to be repeated. Explorers did not wait. Those who waited, died. Instead, she rolled out of the bed, heaping the covers into a vaguely body-shaped roll behind her, and stood behind the open bathroom door. She had no weapon. A mental inventory of the room yielded nothing of use. The bathroom now, yes. There were useful things there. Spray flasks of various things: dry-wash, antiperspirant, depilatory. She visualized where she had left them, the dry-wash on the edge of the bath, set aside, not useful here in Splash One where there was plenty of water. The antiperspirant was in the cabinet. The depilatory was on the back of the convenience, where she had sat to do her legs and the back of her neck. An almost full bottle.

  The click was repeated, this time with a solidly chunking sound as though something had given way. The latch on the bathroom window, no doubt. She began to breathe quietly, deeply. Whoever was breaking in would listen for that. Deeply. Regularly. Breathe.