by Ann Maxwell
“We’ll be safe tonight,” said Kirtn, noting the reptiloids’ soft-footed, deadly strength.
“I’m not going to wait that long to sleep.” Without another word, she curled up on the ground and went into the profound restorative unconsciousness all akhenets learned. Despite the clepts, Kirtn sat protectively beside her, watching her with luminous gold eyes. From time to time he touched her lips lightly, waited, then withdrew, reassured by the warmth of her breath on his fingertips.
After a long time he lay beside her, one finger resting lightly on her neck, counting her pulse as though it were his own. No impatience showed on his face; exhausted akhenets had been known to sleep for five days at a time.
X
It was less than a day before Rheba awoke with a headache that made her grind her teeth. She scratched her arms furiously. The quasi-metal lines of power still itched as her body accommodated itself to the new tissue. Pain stabbed at her temples, then subsided.
“How are you feeling?” asked Kirtn.
“Should have slept longer. Headache.” She stifled a groan and grabbed her forehead.
“Mine aches too,” he said.
She winced. “Disease?” Her voice was ragged, fearful.
“The J/taal has a headache, but it could have come from the beating she took.” He rolled his head on his powerful neck, loosening muscles that were tensed against pain. “No fever, though, and no nausea.”
She muttered something about small blessings. She looked around very slowly, for quick moves brought blinding knives of pain. The clepts lay at equidistant points of a circle with her at its center. The J/taals appeared to be sleeping. Fssa was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s our magic snake?” she asked, looking around again.
“Over there. At the lines.”
She looked beyond Kirtn’s long finger. At first she could not see Fssa. Then she realized that what looked like a bizarre fungus was actually the snake. “What’s he doing? Is that his sleeping shape? Is he sick?”
“He’s not sick, not even a headache. Of course,” dryly, “that could be because he doesn’t have a head to ache at the moment.”
She stared. Fssa altered shape abruptly. A quiver went through one part of his body. She closed her eyes and buckled her temples. The pain intensified, then subsided.
From behind her came a low groan. The J/taal woman was waking up. Rheba turned to ask how the J/taal felt, then realized that conversation was impossible without the snake.
“Fssa,” she called through clenched teeth. “Fssa!”
The Fssireeme whistled to her without visibly changing form. Whistles were the simplest mode of communication for the snake.
“I need you,” she called. “The J/taals are waking up.” Then, hands yanking at her hair, “By the Last Flame, my head is killing me!”
Kirtn, his lips flattened across his teeth in a silent snarl, said nothing. He closed his eyes and listened to J/taal groans. Gradually, agony subsided to a dull ache, like that of nerves that have been overstressed. Fssa slithered up with a cheerful greeting. Kirtn managed not to strangle the snake. Rheba’s fingers twitched, but she, too, restrained herself.
“Ask the J/taals if they need anything. We’ll bring water if they’ll accept it from our mouths,” she said hoarsely.
Fssa flexed into his J/taal speech mode. As the answer came, he simultaneously translated for Rheba. His skill made it easy for his audience to forget that there was a translator at work.
The J/taal female bowed to Rheba, hands open and relaxed, eyes closed, utterly at the mercy of her J/taaleri. “Thank you. As soon as they all wake, we’ll complete the tkleet.”
“Tkleet?” said Rheba.
“The employment ritual,” murmured Fssa in Senyas.
Rheba looked at the snake as a way of telling him that what she said was for him only, not to be translated. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I’m merely a translator, remember?”
“You’re an insubordinate echo,” snapped Rheba.
“Is that unbeautiful?” whistled Fssa mournfully, deflating before her eyes.
She smiled in spite of herself. “No. But what is tkleet?”
“I don’t know,” admitted the snake.
“Can you find out?”
She waited while Fssa and the J/taal exchanged hoarse noises.
“It’s a simple naming ceremony,” said Fssa. “She presents herself and the other units and then you give them names.”
“Don’t they already have names?”
A shrug rippled down Fssa’s lithe body. “Most J/taaleris apparently like to give the units names. It marks the J/taals as their employees.”
Rheba grimaced. “That’s too much like slavery. If they don’t have names, they can choose their own.” She came slowly to her feet, expecting a resurgence of her shattering headache each time she moved. “Tell her that we’ll have the . . . tkleet . . . after her friends are cared for.”
Fssa spoke rapidly, then turned his opalescent sensors back on Rheba. “Will you need me until then?”
“No.”
Fssa slithered off in the direction he had come. When he reached the lines marking the end of sanctuary, he stopped and unfolded into the same bizarre fungal mode he had previously used. She watched for a moment, then turned toward the well.
As she, Kirtn and the female J/taal carried water to the injured, their headaches returned. Other than groaning and grinding their teeth, there was little to be done. Movement seemed to set off the pains, but the wounded J/taals needed water. Finally, the J/taals could drink no more. Kirtn gently checked their injuries. They were healing with remarkable speed. Where bones had been broken, the swellings were gone and the bruises had faded to smears of indeterminate color concealed by dark fur or skin.
“At this rate, they’ll be on their feet by sunset.”
“At this rate,” Rheba said, teeth clenched, “I’ll be dead by sunset.”
He almost smiled. “No you won’t. You’ll just wish you were.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
The pains stopped, then came with redoubled force. She cried out involuntarily. So did Kirtn and the J/taals. The clepts howled. Paralyzed by pain, she clung to the Bre’n. The agony stopped, leaving her sweaty and limp.
“What’s wrong with us?” she cried.
Kirtn held her, stroking her hair. Though he was affected by the pains, he was much less susceptible than she was. “I don’t know. It’s no disease, though. We felt it at the same time. So did the J/taals and clepts.”
“Is it Loo torture? I thought we were supposed to be safe inside the circles.”
“I don’t know.” Kirtn gathered her against his body as though he could shield her from whatever caused pain. “Maybe Fssa knows. He’s been here a long time.” He covered her ears and whistled a Bre’n imperative.
Fssa answered after a long pause. Overtones of reluctance were clear in the snake’s Bre’n whistle. Whatever he was doing, he preferred not to be disturbed.
“Then stay there, you cherf,” muttered Rheba, counting each heartbeat like a knife turning behind her eyes.
Kirtn, however, did not give up. “Listen to me, snake, We’re all in pain, even the clepts. It’s not a disease. Have you ever heard of the Loos torturing their Fold slaves by giving them mind-splitting headaches?”
Fssa wavered, then folded in upon himself until he was in his ground-traveling mode. He undulated over to Rheba and turned his sensors on her. “Torture? Is it that bad?”
“Yes!” Slowly, she uncurled her arms, clenched around Kirtn’s neck in a hold that would have been too painful for a Senyas to bear. “It comes and goes.” She winced, rubbing her temples with hands that shook. “Even when it goes, it aches. I feel as if an army of cherfs were using my brain for slap ball.”
Fssa cocked his head from side to side, bringing the opalescent pits to bear on her from various angles. Then he began a startling series of changes. He moved so rap
idly that he resembled a computer display showing all possible variations on the theme of Fssireeme. “If there’s an energy source pointed in your direction, I can’t sense it,” he said at last. “And if I can’t sense it, either it doesn’t exist or it isn’t turned on now.”
“Stay here and keep listening,” said Kirtn.
Fssa whistled mournfully.
The Bre’n’s whistle was shrill, a sound crackling with impatience. “The fire dancer hurts,” he said, as though that ended all possibility of argument. And for him, it did.
“So do the rest of you,” she said.
“So does it,” whistled Fssa softly, “I think.”
“It? What are you talking about?” asked Kirtn.
“The rock.”
“The rock,” repeated Kirtn, looking around quickly. There were rocks of all sizes and shapes nearby. “Which rock?”
Fssa whipped out a pointing quill. “That one,” he whistled, indicating the rock the Gellean children had fought over.
“Is it one of the First People?” asked Rheba, pulling herself up to look over Kirtn’s shoulder.
Fssa hesitated. “It could be, but . . .” His body rippled with metallic highlights as he shifted into a half-fungus position. “It just doesn’t feel like one of them. Yet it feels as if it’s alive. It’s distressed. I keep getting images of pieces of it being torn off and ground to colored dust.” His sensors turned back to Rheba. His Bre’n whistle was both wistful and seductive, pleading with her emotions. “Could you save it, fire dancer? It’s not a child—at least I don’t think it is—but it feels alive.”
Kirtn smiled as Rheba muttered about magic snakes and menageries. She sighed. “Tell the J/taal to send the clepts to guard Kirtn while he picks up the damn rock.”
Fssa, who had listened to the J/taal speak to her clepts, went directly to the animals. He galvanized them with a curdling ululation. They formed a moving guard around Kirtn as he went toward the rock. The instant he crossed out of sanctuary, the bushes began to rustle. As he bent down to pick up the rock, three men rushed out. A clept leaped forward in a blur of speed. Fangs flashed. One man fell, another screamed. All retreated to the concealing brush. The clepts watched, but did not follow; they had been told to guard, not to attack.
Holding the rock. Kirtn watched the wounded scavenger crawl back under cover. The closest clept turned and regarded Kirtn with oblong silver eyes. Blood shone against its pale muzzle. It resumed its guard position at a point equidistant from the other clepts.
“Glad you’re with me,” muttered the Bre’n. “I’d hate to be against you.” He looked at the rock in his hands. It was a grubby specimen, unprepossessing but for an occasional flash of pure color. “Alive or not, you could use a scrub.”
Light winked across the few crystals that were not obscured by dirt.
“Was that yes or no?”
Sun glittered across the stone as he turned it.
“A definite maybe,” he said. “To the well with you. The white side, of course. Even though you aren’t furry, I doubt if the Loos would like you bathing at their precious blue well.”
Ignoring the waiting people, Kirtn went to the well, grabbed a handful of twigs for a scrubber, and went to work on the stone. Mud fell away in sticky clots. When he was finished, he whistled with surprise and delight. The stone was an odd crystal formation that contained every color in the visible spectrum. Rheba, who had walked up halfway through the stone’s bath, was equally impressed. Fssa, dangling around her neck, was not.
“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. “Like a rainbow, only much more concentrated.”
“As useless as a rainbow, too,” whistled Fssa, using a minor key that was as irritating as steel scraped over slate.
“It was your idea to rescue this bauble,” pointed out Kirtn. “So keep your many mouths shut.”
“Fssireeme don’t have mouths,” Fssa snapped. “And it doesn’t look as pretty as a rainbow.”
Kirtn laughed. “You’re jealous.”
“Of your mouth?” whistled Fssa indignantly.
“No. Of the stone’s beauty.”
The snake subsided. He slid down Rheba’s arm, dangled from her wrist and dropped onto the ground.
“You’re beautiful,” whistled the Bre’n, squatting down beside the snake and balancing the stone on his leg.
Light rippled and gleamed across Fssa’s body. Color seemed to swirl into the sensors that were trained on Kirtn. “That’s the third time you’ve told me that today. Our bargain was only for twice.”
Fingertips traced the snake’s delicate head scales. “You’re beautiful more than twice a day.”
Fssa quivered. A superb Bre’n trill filled the air with color. Rheba sat on her heels next to Kirtn and watched Fssa.
“You really were jealous, weren’t you?” she asked.
“It’s not easy to give up being beautiful.” Fssa’s whistle was mournful but resigned.
“More than one thing at a time can be beautiful. Rainbow’s beauty doesn’t subtract from yours.”
“Rainbow? Oh, the rock.” Fssa sighed. “You’re right, I suppose. And I wouldn’t have left it out there even if I’d known how pretty it was. It was frightened. At least I think it was. Maybe,” he continued hopefully, “maybe it isn’t alive after all.”
He assumed his fungus shape. After a few moments he rippled, then quivered violently. Instantly, Rheba cried out in pain. Agony sliced through her brain in great sweeping arcs that threatened to blind her.
“Stop!” screamed Rheba. When Fssa seemed not to hear, she lashed out with her hand, knocking him off balance. “Stop it!”
Abruptly the agony ended. She slumped to the ground, dazed by the absence of pain. Fssa’s sensors went from one to the other of his friends. “What’s wrong? I wasn’t doing—I didn’t mean—are you all right?”
Kirtn answered the urgent whistle with a reassuring touch. “Whatever you were doing to scan that rock was causing us a lot of pain.”
“I?” whistled the snake. “After my first question, I didn’t focus a single sound wave. I was only listening.” Then, “Oh. Of course. It’s alive after all. Rainbow. A very difficult frequency, though. Complex and multileveled, with resonances that. . . I wonder . . .”
Fssa snapped into his fungus shape, only thinner this time, and more curved. Slow ripples swept through his body. Rheba screamed as Rainbow answered. The fungus collapsed into a chagrined Fssireeme.
“I’m sorry, but I had to be sure. Rainbow is alive. I still don’t think it’s a First People, but I can’t be sure until I learn its language. Now that I’m collecting its full range, things should go more quickly.”
“No,” she said raggedly. “I don’t care if that’s the First People’s Flawless Crystal in person. Every time it talks my brain turns to fire. Keep it quiet or I’ll—oh!” She grabbed her head. “To think I called it pretty! Shut it up, snake. Shut it up!”
The fire in her mind slowly burned out. She opened her eyes and stared warily at the rock. Luminous colors flashed from every crystal spire. Pure light pooled in hollows and scintillated from crystal peaks. The crystals were lucent, absolutely flawless. Rainbow was a crown fit for a Zaarain god.
She groaned and wished she had never seen it.
XI
“All right,” Rheba said, looking around at Kirtn and the J/taals. “You’ve had several days to think about it. Now, how do we get out of here?”
Fssa translated her words like a musical echo, leaving out only the undertone of strain that was the legacy of Rainbow’s bizarre frequencies. This was the first day she had felt able to string together two coherent thoughts, much less plan an escape from the Loo-chim Fold. The snake did his translations from his favorite place, hidden in her long hair, revealing only enough of himself to speak. As J/taal required little more than a flexible orifice, a pseudo-tongue, and bellows to pump air, he was hidden but for the stirring of her hair with each of his “breaths.”
The J/taals lis
tened, then turned and looked at the woman they called M/dere—Strategist. She was the one who had accepted employment in the name of all the J/taals. Rest, water and food had restored her health, a fact that was reflected in the vitreous luster of her black fur. Her four friends were wholly recovered also, and had proved it by spending many hours doing intricate gymnastics that both toned and relaxed their bodies.
M/dere looked at each of the J/taals in turn, silently gathering information from them. They had a species-specific telepathy that greatly aided them in their mercenary work. They used their voices only to communicate with non-J/taals. As a result, their language was simple and their voices unrefined.
“As you asked, we have shared our memories.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, J/taaleri. No one has ever escaped from the Fold that we know of. Not even in legend. Once outside the Fold, some might have escaped from their slave masters and either hidden themselves in the wild places or managed to get off planet in a stolen ship. There are at least rumors pointing toward such escapes.”
“Fine. Now, how do we get out of the Fold?” asked Kirtn.
“Excuse me. M/dur has special information about the Fold.” She exchanged a long silence with M/dur, the male whom she had nursed with special care. He was their best fighter; as such, he had the second-strongest vote in their council. M/dere blinked, revealing eyes as green as aged copper. “Slaves of potential value are kept in the Fold until they are Adjusted.”
“Yes, but how long does that take?” asked Rheba.
“It varies with each slave. Adjusted slaves stay within the sanctuary lines. UnAdjusted slaves stay outside the lines except to eat or drink.”
“But don’t the Loos care which slaves do which?”
Fssa translated Rheba’s tangled question with a hiss of reproval that only she heard.
“Loos,” answered M/dere, “don’t care about unAdjusted slaves.”
“Makes sense.” said Kirtn. “If you’re too dumb, mean or stubborn to survive on Loo terms, they don’t want you as a slave. You’d be more trouble than you’re worth. UnAdjusted.”