The Sorceress of Karres

by Eric Flint

  "Like I said: A plant. Like a weed. But one that grows in people." The Leewit gestured: "You know. Like really inside."

  Hulik raised her perfect eyebrows. "Really?"

  "Yes. And in a way she's rather like Sedmon of the six lives," said Pausert. "There is only one plant. But it has haploid plantlets growing in those it controls. They appear to be telepathically linked. Mebeckey-the first of our rescues in the Chaladoor-was a xeno-archeologist who was really the root cause of Marshi becoming infected with it. He was himself infected with the spores of the plant, and became a subordinate, but he was out of range of the telepathic plant most of the time. We think that he is clean now."

  "So these things are out there, breeding and taking over humans?" said the Sedmon.

  "No. Well, not if the xeno-archeologist is to be believed. This is the haploid stage. Normally the non-dominant stage, with the mother-tree controlling all. To breed they need a better host species than humans."

  "That's not something I am unhappy about," said the Sedmon with his characteristic dry humor. "By the way, Hulik has something to tell you."

  She blushed. "It's not public knowledge. But we are due some sextuplets."

  "Sextuplets!" exclaimed Goth, looking at the still-slim Hulik do Eldel.

  "It seemed the best way," said Hulik. "And Karres was very obliging in helping it happen without embryosurgery. We owe you."

  "Well! Congratulations!" Pausert shook the Sedmon firmly by the hand, and kissed Hulik.

  "Any nasty surprises with precog names?" asked Goth, suspiciously.

  "Not that we know of," said Hulik, looking puzzled. "Why?"

  "Karres business," said Goth. "Best that you don't know. Anyway, I am not going to tell you. Congratulations. I am coming around to babies. But rather slowly."

  Hulik looked at her. Looked at Pausert. "So tell us more about these telepathic plants. They plainly still are a problem even if they can't spread."

  "I think that they can spread," said the captain, regretfully. "I suspect that some spores were taken along by Marshi from the stasis box on the cindered world. But they have a finite supply."

  "How finite?" asked the former Imperial agent and current consort to the Daal. Right then she seemed more like a deadly agent.

  Pausert shrugged. "How do we know, Hulik? We know very little about these aliens. But I can imagine if that they took over one of the Sedmons, it could be serious."

  "Very," said Hulik, in a tone so cold that it approached absolute zero degrees.

  "I suggest that you get Mebeckey and get as much information from him as possible. What a trip! Have you ever heard of anyone making not one but two rescues from the Chaladoor?"

  "Only the witches of Karres would even think of it," said Hulik.

  "Which is one of the reasons we are very careful to stay on the right side of Karres," said the Sedmons. "We have grik-dogs to protect us against nannites. What can we do about these plants?"

  "In some ways they're less serious," explained Pausert, glad to offer some words of comfort. "It appears that a simple analgesic will make the body toxic to the plant, cause the plant to leave it. And the victim will undergo a complete recovery, it seems. Ask Mebeckey."

  "I think we will," said Hulik do Eldel. "We have some very sensitive truth meters."

  "And a few people guaranteed to explain to him that the truth is worth telling," said the Sedmon, making it clear that he was the Daal of dread Uldune, and the Lord of the ancient House of Thunders, where they still skinned crooks alive. Pausert hoped that Mebeckey told the whole truth and very fast. Uldune would have no problem with his criminal background. That was fine-just so long as he didn't try it on Uldune. Otherwise he'd discover that its bloody pirate-port history was only covered by a very thin layer of varnish, a varnish that cracked quite easily.

  "We've got samples of the plant frozen in a space crate, if you want to get your scientists working on it. So long as you understand that it is exceptionally dangerous stuff. They'll have to work remotely, just in case. We really have very little idea of what we are dealing with here. We wouldn't mind knowing quite a lot more."

  Sedmon nodded. "It will be done. And on issues like this, Uldune and Karres stand shoulder to shoulder." He smiled crookedly at them, and took Hulik's hand. "In other matters, of course, it is Patham's devils take the hindmost."

  "We have two missionaries who can help you with that," said the Leewit, generously. "They're experts. Really."

  "Although you may want the Megair Cannibal we brought along instead. He might be a better bargain," said Pausert.

  Hulik laughed. "Is there anything you didn't collect on this trip?"

  "Quite a few answers are still missing," admitted Captain Pausert.

  ***

  That wasn't the only thing missing. Mebeckey was too.

  The xeno-archeologist obviously still had some contacts with the underworld, even here on Uldune in the capital city of Zergandol. By the look on the Sedmon's face, some Daalmen were going to be working overtime until Mebeckey was rounded up again.

  The Venture was to have a major refit, which she needed after her encounter with the Megair Cannibals. The captain, Goth, the Leewit, and her new bodyguard had to find somewhere to stay. Instinct made the captain shy away from the Daal's fortress-palace, the House of Thunders. But a guest house for visiting diplomats on the outskirts of Zergandol was a good alternative. It was a far step up from the frowsty lodgings they'd rented here the first time they'd come to Uldune, as fugitives.

  It was also slightly less difficult for them to receive a secretive caller. "Olimy!" exclaimed Goth.

  Olimy held his finger to his lips and set up a small device with several spidery metallic arms. "Spy-proofing," he said. "This is Uldune, Goth, and you can bet that the Daalmen and a half a dozen others are watching this place. My, you've grown! Looking more like your mother every time I see you."

  "I think that's a compliment," said Goth.

  "Oh, it is," said Olimy easily. "I had a big crush on her when I was younger. She was a few years older than me and I don't think she even knew that I was alive."

  "Last time we weren't at all sure that you were alive," said Goth. He'd been disminded and in a state of suspended animation, after his brush with Moander in pursuit of Manaret's synergiser crystal, when they'd transported him across the Chaladoor.

  "I owe you and Captain Pausert a debt of thanks for that! Anyway, Threbus and Toll sent me. It was obvious that there was stuff you didn't want to say on the sub-radio."

  Goth nodded. "Let me call the captain and the Leewit."

  "The Leewit!" exclaimed Olimy. "Is she still the holy terror she used to be?"

  "Oh no," said Goth. "She's worse. Now she has an enforcer too and not just those whistles. But actually she's grown up a lot. Nearly ready for missions of her own, I think. But I wouldn't tell her that."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," agreed Olimy, solemnly.

  Goth went and called the captain and the Leewit using some innocent pretext. It wouldn't fool the watchers, because when they disappeared it would be obvious, but she did her best.

  "So," said Olimy, once he'd been introduced to the captain, and had been pummeled by the Leewit. "What weren't you saying on the subradio?"

  "Well, we found out that the Phantom ships are not impervious to gravity. It seems to affect whatever mechanism they're using to move or to stay intangible. You can get at them with a simple grav-tractor. Obviously we still had to evade their torpedoes to get close enough, but once they realized we could do it, it put them off attacking us."

  "Very useful. Going around the Chaladoor was making things difficult for us. But I also see why you didn't really want to inform Uldune. To have them pushing aggressively into that part of space serves no-one well."

  "The Daal might disagree with you," said Goth. "Anyway, that's not the only problem out there. There's Marshi, or as she now calls herself, Tchab."

  "Who is directing a lot of muscle, financial and othe
rwise, into looking for one Vala-or, as she now calls herself, Goth," said Olimy with a grin. "She's actually proving very hard to deal with. She's taken over two of the big criminal families. Your mother was all for just going in bare-knuckle and dealing with her. But we've been trying more subtle means. Anyway, just getting to her has proved difficult. She has a very good communication network, and some fanatically loyal employees."

  "She doesn't have either," said Goth. "She is both. She's a telepathic plant, and the communication is between her and her fellow parts of the same mother-plant. They're all just one thing see. But I think she's the heart of it."

  Goth proceeded to explain, with interjections from the other two, just where Marshi/Tchab had come from. She detailed her adventures on Nikkeldepain, with considerable interest from the Leewit, who was still very treasure minded. Filling in what they'd found out from Mebeckey she became less so. "So it's the Illtraming that Marshi and her fellow plant-invaded are really after. Without them they'll eventually just die. Somehow this map or box came into Threbus's possession. I removed it… led them to believe I was part of one of the criminal families."

  "That's probably why she took them over," said Olimy.

  "Well, then I disappeared. They simply couldn't find me because I wasn't there-vanished in time. They must have got onto the trail again about when we got to the imperial capital. Got DNA or retinal prints or something."

  "I think we need, firstly, to recover that map. Probably destroy it. Humans don't need the Melchin mother-plant. Some things are better extinct. And if the Illtraming still survive out there, somewhere, they certainly don't need the Melchin back either."

  Goth nodded. "They really are creepy. But the vatches, by the way, can tell who is plant-invaded."

  Olimy screwed up his face as if in pain. "Not more vatch work!"

  "And so how goes the dealing with nannite plague? Sounded like-reading between the lines Threbus was having fun with the vatches."

  Olimy held his head in his hands and laughed. "You have no idea how much of a circus-and I mean a circus, it has turned out to be. It's effective, all right. But the little vatches are a very fickle audience. And their tastes run more to Himbo Petey than to Richard Cravan. And of course the fact that people lose their minds just after the circus has been… well, it wouldn't take much to start plague rumors associated with them. We've had to do a lot of very careful clean-ups, post operations."

  "I can imagine!"

  "Yes. Fortunately the nannites tend to estrange their victims from their families. Anyway, we think we're winning, but we'll have to keep it up for a good few more years yet."

  "More touring with the lattice ships. So: we need to know: Where is the Petey B now? Because we'll need to pay it a visit."

  "Yay!" said the Leewit, clapping her hands.

  "Psaria II at the moment, Mandellin's world next," said Olimy. "We could arrange a pick up."

  "Might have fun finding it!" said Goth. "And I am not saying where just in case this spy-protection is not beyond the Daalmen."

  Olimy gave her crooked grin. "You're a pretty sharp operative yourself, you know. "

  "I seem to be developing some new klatha skill. Not quite sure what it is, but it hit me hard on Megair. Anyway, if I was a bit sharper, and I had known what I was dealing with," said Goth, ruefully, "I'd have dealt with Marshi permanently. I could have slipped her an analgesic… Hang on. I did. I injected her in the museum, and it didn't work. Worked slowly on the fellow that was pretending to be Mebeckey, and not at all on her. She got up and ran."

  "Hmm," Olimy said, considering. "It might need to be that specific kind of analgesic. Or you might have hit a button or a zipper or something, and not got enough into her."

  "The problem is we just don't know. Or it might have been something else. I hope the Sedmon's scientists give us something to work on," said Pausert heavily. "The one thing about Karres work is that we spend a lot of time just not knowing enough. Feeling as if you are a rat in someone's complicated maze."

  "That's for sure," said Olimy with feeling. "I'm going to take this information to someone else, who will take it on to Karres. No, I don't know where that is right now either. But there are links. And watchers."

  Chapter 28

  The repairs and refit of the Venture took less time and more money than Pausert had anticipated. Doing Karres's business could be an expensive pastime, the captain reflected ruefully, checking his finances. Well, Karres was good for it. And it was good to be back on the Venture again, the captain decided, as they boosted for Mandellin's world. They'd hidden their intentions as well as possible, but Pausert was still nervous about the missing Mebeckey. They'd saved his life, not once, but thrice, and still he'd run off. True, they'd been less than trusting after the final incident. But what did the man expect?

  The Megair Cannibal, now cowed and terrified himself, was taken away by the Daalmen. When asked what they were going to do with him the squad leader explained. "He's going to the Daals' research labs. I believe they have instructions to keep him alive and to learn as much as possible of the Megair Cannibal language. We can at least try to get that from him. Besides, they want to look at his physiology."

  The Dell brothers, for all their sanctimonious piety and thanking Patham-not the Venture 's crew-for their rescue were still deeply grateful to Patham for making his instruments available, and happy to be back in human society. Already they were preaching up a storm on Uldune, with an impressive and not widely believed tale of great Patham's preservation of their lives among the Megair Cannibals.

  Ta'zara had decided that the Leewit was the human vessel of his salvation and was planning to honor that debt, and only the Leewit could possibly persuade him otherwise. He could hardly be unaware that he was dealing with Karres witches-but that was of no importance to him, it seemed. He followed her like an adoring puppy. He had a berth on the Venture, because, as Goth put it, he'd just run behind otherwise, and then they'd have to feel guilty because he couldn't breath vacuum. He was also an even better cook than the new robo-butler. And they had him teaching them the ancient Na'kalauf martial arts, which helped to pass the time on the long space journey to the agricultural Mandellin's world.

  Which proved to be full of cornfields and empty of circuses. They set down and started asking questions.

  The lattice ship had moved on. To the neighboring giant world of Pampez for the annual wisent round-up and fair, or so they were informed.

  That was barely a two day hop. Soon the world of Pampez swung below them, an enormous ancient world where the internal fires had long since cooled. Light in metals and not overly endowed with water, the wind had flattened the world into an almost endless plain. The captain put the ship into orbit, and got the Leewit to call port control.

  A little later as the world of greens and beiges turned below, the Leewit came to the captain's cabin. "Not getting any answer, Captain. But there are ships landing all the time. Maybe they don't have port control?"

  Pausert came to the control room, in time to see two vast freighters going in to land. There was no communicator chatter, from them or from below. "It's possible, I suppose. It happens on Vadevillia. But it's unlike any local government to miss a chance to collect duties. Well, let's go in. If we can deal with the Megair Cannibals, then we can deal with the local officials."

  "Maybe," said Goth cheerfully. "Although Nikkeldepain taught me that some of them can make the Cannibals seem downright friendly."

  "Well, those Cannibals were pretty welcoming, seeing as we were delivering fresh meat," said Vezzarn. "So where do we land, Captain? Just follow them?"

  Pausert looked on the long range scopes. "They seem to be heading for the point of those dust plumes. So I think we should too."

  They did. And it soon became apparent that the reason for there being no port control was that there was no port. Just endless hard-baked flatness with huge herds of wisents being loaded. The town wasn't much of a town either. Its only reason for being was a
low rock-ridge and an up-welling aquifer along its edge that provided a hundred mile long drinking trough. Much of the year this town barely woke up. Right now, however, the herdsmen were seeing that it barely slept. And the circus was there too.

  ***

  The synthasilk bunting was still bright above the dusty town. Goth and the Leewit were both surprised at how it called to them. Even the captain was smiling, humming his "escapists" background music. It felt, if not like coming home, at least like arriving at an old friend's home.

  "Petey, Byrum and Keep," said the Leewit happily to Ta'zara. "The best show in the galaxy!"

  The bodyguard had rapidly become a cross between a personal servant and a favorite uncle. He had quietly come to ask Pausert's advice, though. "She talks to thin air, Captain," he'd said worriedly.

  "She's from Karres," Pausert explained. "They do that." It was easier than trying to explain vatches to him. Or klatha.

  Vezzarn stayed with the ship. "I'm too old for the circus. And I want to check that tube, skipper. I think they rushed the alignment."

  They walked down the bustling streets of the town, past merchants selling everything that saddle nomads might want part with their hard earned maels for, and quite a lot else besides. Wind-etched and sun-bitten men and women in leathers with extravagant wide-brimmed hats bargained, drank and celebrated at the towns watering holes-or just walked, taking in the crowds, the sights, the buildings. And, of course, headed for the synthasilk magnificence of the lattice ship circus. The Venture 's crew joined the human tide flowing towards the turnstiles.

  They hadn't even gotten to the turnstiles when a beaming Himbo Petey came out in person to greet them, and to escort them through like visiting royalty.

  "We got word that you were coming. We've been watching out for you. So here's hoping that you've come to rejoin us?" asked the showmaster. "Ethy will be here just as soon as she gets offstage."