And the Peyti saw it that way too, although she got a sense, after her research was approved, that they would close this loophole in the future. They had seemed annoyed that someone—a non-Peyti—had found a loophole in one of their own regulations.
She moved the soil sample into the storage cabinet behind her desk. She did most of her work using contemporary equipment, wands that went deep into the soil and took readings as they went; chips on her gloves (that spoke to the chips on her fingers), which took readings from anything she touched; her environmental suit, which monitored the atmosphere and its changes around her; and the lab equipment she had inside the habitat, which took each microparticle of soil and explored it thoroughly without destroying it.
She was learning a lot, although she wasn’t sure how useful it would be to anyone besides her. That was the one thing she hadn’t told the corporations when she applied for her help: She believed she had a 95% chance of failing to discover anything new.
That didn’t bother her, but it would have upset them, considering how much money they had spent to fund her.
She didn’t mind. She didn’t have to pay any of it back. And she got a three-year-long commitment from them. Three years in which she didn’t have to see anyone if she didn’t want to. She could study her little patch of Peyla and maybe learn something about another planet that pleased her, even if it didn’t please anyone else.
She sat in her chair, ready to focus on the analysis of several grains of dirt, when something squealed outside. The squeal was high and piercing, almost painful to her ears.
She looked up, saw a Peyti in the air several meters outside her building. The Peyti was going backward, almost as if it had been catapulted out of a machine or dropped from great height and blown backward by a wind. Only there was no wind. And the Peyti didn’t fly.
The Peyti was the source of the noise. It flailed its arms, head tilted back, eyes even wider than usual.
And then it turned bright orange, revealing its twig-like skeleton, and vanished. Bits of glowing orange fell to the ground, lighting up the dirt around it.
Gallen put her hand over her mouth. Had that been some kind of projection? Or was it a vision of some kind?
Or had she actually seen it? Had a Peyti died in front of her in a particularly horrible way?
Her heart was pounding. She moved her fingers across the desk, accessing the security feeds. Only she shut off the sound. She didn’t want to hear that scream ever again.
The exterior cameras had picked up something flying at her, and that something resolved into the Peyti she had seen. The security feeds told her that the Peyti was male. She tapped the screen for more information when she heard the scream again.
She cursed. She didn’t want to hear that, so she punched off the sound. The desktop sent up a warning to stop trying to shut off sound that wasn’t on.
Which meant that the sound was coming from outside—again. She looked up in time to see another Peyti propelled backward. That Peyti was screaming too, but not flailing. Instead, it was looking around, trying to see if it could grab onto something.
It looked identical to the other Peyti, but she knew that was just a trick of the eyes. She had never been able to tell individual Peyti apart at first glance.
This Peyti’s scream got more concentrated, then an orange beam appeared briefly. It enveloped the Peyti, showing its skeleton just like the last one, before this Peyti literally exploded.
Charred orange bits of Peyti fell to the ground, just like the previous Peyti.
Gallen’s stomach turned. She crouched, afraid whatever was doing this could see her. She grabbed a pad and slid under the desk, breathing so hard she had to caution herself against hyperventilating.
Peyla was one of the safest places in the known universe. The Peyti believed in laws, not violence. They hadn’t had war here in nearly a century. They were known as the most peace-loving species in the entire Alliance.
They even conformed their laws to Earth Alliance-preferred laws—at least for resident aliens, so that people like Gallen wouldn’t make a mistake and subject themselves to something culturally inexplicable.
Another scream began. She glanced at the pad, at the images from the cameras on that side of her habitat, saw another Peyti sailing toward her.
Something awful was happening, right outside her windows. Something terrible and terrifying.
She sent an emergency message through her links, coding it for humans only. She didn’t want any Peyti outside to know she was here. She didn’t even hit her emergency beacon.
She needed to stay hidden. But she had to stay safe.
She wasn’t sure how she could do both.
Seven
The walk to Abbondiado proper was shorter than Zagrando had expected. The city looked far away when he left the landing area, but he hadn’t realized that Whiteley had landed the ship on the flat top of a hill.
The bulk of Abbondiado was down that hill and in a bowl-shaped area. And it wasn’t ruined like he had expected. Most of the buildings remained intact, if changed, by their current residents.
Murals covered everything, most of them non-representational. That surprised Zagrando the most because the Fahhl’d decorated nothing except their own bodies.
The Fahhl’d were greenish creatures, no wider than his left arm. They were made up of thread-like fibers that wrapped around a central core. He’d never seen the actual core, although he’d seen pictures of it. It was clear, the size of a strand of hair, and it held everything from their internal organs to their brains. They did not have obvious eyes, which always unnerved him. Instead, they saw through their outer fibers. Sometimes, when they were intrigued, they raised their outer fibers and brought them close to whatever they were studying.
Because of their interesting build, they could adapt to almost any living situation. They rarely built their own homes; they just modified what they found.
But they didn’t paint. Humans did. Other species did as well, but he hadn’t realized those species lived here.
Nor did he realize that the Disty had once had a presence here—not until he saw the ruins of a Disty colony in the center of Abbondiado, near the river. Whiteley explained to him that the Disty had found this place first. But PierLuigi Frémont drove them off—or so the legend went.
Zagrando wondered if the Disty—who believed that a dead body contaminated all it touched—had heard of Frémont and thought it the better part of valor to vacate this small colony than to live in proximity to him. But Zagrando didn’t ask Whiteley. Zagrando didn’t want to seem too learned about anything other than weapons.
The Disty ruins didn’t just sit like an abandoned lump in the middle of town. Instead, they had become some kind of artist sculpture. More murals decorated the walls, using zigzag patterns to accent the haphazardness of Disty architecture.
Some of the murals were quite faded, as if they had existed since the Disty left, but others had fresh colors, including a vibrant red that caught the eye. Someone was restoring the murals with great love and care.
“No one lives there,” Whiteley said. Apparently he had noticed Zagrando’s glance at the Disty ruins.
“I figured,” Zagrando said. “The artwork surprised me, that’s all.”
“There’s some kind of renovation going on here. Restoring the good stuff, getting rid of the bad stuff, that kind of thing.” Whiteley stopped and peered in the direction of the Disty ruins. Then he shook his head. “Waste of time, if you ask me.”
Anything that failed to make obvious money—and a lot of it—was a waste of time to Whiteley.
“It does seem odd for the Fahhl’d to be doing this,” Zagrando said.
Whiteley gave him a how-dumb-are-you look, which Zagrando both wanted and expected. Just like Whiteley played dumb with the people around him, Zagrando often played dumb with Whiteley.
It usually worked, too. Whiteley couldn’t help telling Zagrando when he had made a major mistake.
; “The Fahhl’d don’t do stuff like this,” Whiteley said. “Abbondiado is a major artist colony. Human artists. The kind who are avoiding all the corporate crap from the Alliance and trying to make it on their own.”
Zagrando felt a fissure of discomfort. He had thought humans had long ago abandoned this place. He should have known that humans lived here. Someone should have told him or it should have been in the information he accessed on the public links. That it wasn’t disturbed him greatly.
But he couldn’t let his discomfort show. “These artists figured they can ‘make it’ by rehabbing Abbondiado?”
“Other historical sites make tons of money off tourists. Why not Abbondiado?” Whiteley said, adjusting the pack on his back. The adjustment was the only sign that he found the pack heavy.
“You’re the mainstream businessman,” Zagrando said. “You tell me.”
“I think it’s long-term smart and short-term stupid,” Whiteley said. “Someone will make money off this place, just not these idiots. They’ll fix it all nice, open it up, and no one will come here. Then some corporation will come in, chase out the Fahhl’d—pay them to leave or something—package the place just right, and stupid Earth Alliance tourists will swarm here. Tell me that I’m wrong.”
He wasn’t wrong. Zagrando could actually envision it, particularly now that he had seen this community. It certainly wasn’t what he expected. He hadn’t expected the charm or the beauty.
But that feeling of unease he had noted when he got off the ship remained. He couldn’t quite recall ever feeling like this before—extremely pleased with the beauty of a place and at the same time possessed with the urge to get the hell out of here right now.
Some of it might have been the river. It was the source of the impending rain smell. It also was a brownish orange that reminded Zagrando of puke. He couldn’t tell the source of the river’s color—the nearby hillside was an earth-like green—and that bothered him, too.
Whiteley led him around a corner, and suddenly the entire sense of the community changed. A humming sound, like a constantly vibrating violin string, grew.
Maybe that was the source of Zagrando’s unease. He must have been hearing that sound before he was actually aware of it. He made himself take a deep calming breath and go farther forward.
This entire section of the city was a gigantic public market. Only the Fahhl’d ran it, not humans, so at first, it looked impenetrable. Bright threads in gold, red, silver, and blue wrapped the market in a web.
Zagrando had been around the Fahhl’d long enough to know that those threads weren’t actual fabric, but Fahhl’d performance artists making some kind of political statement.
He’d never tried to figure out Fahhl’d politics, since they were always regional and always arcane, but he did know better than to barrel into the market without permission.
Apparently Whiteley did as well. He made a sharp left into a building not covered in thread and hurried down a flight of stairs.
Zagrando followed. The rain smell slowly changed into a mildew odor combined with something else, almost like a salty, pasty smell. It made Zagrando want to sneeze.
But the discomfort was leaving him, and he realized that he could no longer hear that hum. He suspected it was gone on the subconscious level as well.
The stairs went down a long way. The air grew cool. Someone had stuck transportable ship lights against the walls, which told Zagrando that no power came to this building. Whether that meant that the Fahhl’d hadn’t restored power to Abbondiado or whether that meant this building was supposed to be uninhabited, Zagrando didn’t know.
That was one of the many things he hated about the job he did now. When he was on Valhalla Basin, he could tell just by the way a building looked whether or not something was going wrong there.
Here—and everywhere he went now—he had no way of knowing if what he saw was normal or abnormal, safe or threatening. He felt constantly off balance, and no matter how long he did this job, he didn’t get used to it.
His handlers would argue that was a good thing. He needed to stay off balance to do his job. But a person who was off balance was a person who expended too much energy, even when doing nothing. It was no wonder he had lost weight in the past few years. At least he had retrained all of his muscles. Now, at least, he was in fighting shape.
He just never knew when or where he might fight.
He certainly hoped it wasn’t here. Escaping from whatever place he ended up might mean running back up this ridiculous flight of stairs.
Finally, Whiteley reached the bottom. He waited there for Zagrando to catch up. Down here, the walls had been carved out of the dirt and slapped with a substance that colonists used to make sure the dirt didn’t collapse. That substance had turned a sickly orange, which now told Zagrando why the river had its unusual color.
It was probably too toxic to drink as well.
Frémont really had come close to destroying Abbondiado. Zagrando wondered where the locals got their fresh water, then decided it was none of his business.
“You let me do the talking,” Whiteley said. “He wanted to meet you, but that’s as far as it goes.”
Zagrando hated it when the rules changed just before a meeting. “I need to do my own negotiating.”
“Then you can go back up those stairs all by yourself,” Whiteley said. “You have to be sanctioned to talk to this guy, and you’re not.”
“Why didn’t you get me sanctioned before we got here?” Zagrando asked.
“This is how you get sanctioned, dumbass,” Whiteley said. “He doesn’t do anything without a meet. But there’s protocol. He will ask you questions directly. Even if you understand them, you will answer through me. Got that?”
“He doesn’t speak Standard?” Zagrando asked. He didn’t think there was a human in the sector who didn’t speak Standard.
“Oh, he speaks it,” Whiteley said. “Just not well enough for anyone to understand. You’ll see.”
He pushed open the door, and the mildew smell turned into a full-blown stench. Zagrando’s eyes watered. He hadn’t been assaulted by a smell like that in a long, long time. He could taste it, and he knew he would never ever get this smell out of his clothing.
If he had been anywhere else, he would have snidely thanked Whiteley for the warning. But Zagrando knew better than to speak.
He wasn’t looking at a human enclave. Whiteley had led him to an Emzada Lair.
Zagrando had never actually seen or smelled an Emzada Lair before. He’d always heard that it was an overwhelming sensual experience, and it was. His skin itched, and he kept swallowing so that he wouldn’t gag on the odor.
The Lair itself was lighter than the stairwell, but the light seemed gray, mostly because of the skin cells coating everything. The Emzada itself sat in the center of the room like a gigantic slug. It needed the cool air to slow down the rate of sloughing. It lost one-quarter of its skin every day in an oxygen-rich environment. Since the skin regenerated, the Emzada really didn’t care, but it had to be careful that it didn’t lose too much.
Its skin had medicinal properties for the Ilidio and other species, which made the skin cells very valuable. As a result, the Emzaden stayed in areas where the Ilidio weren’t common.
In fact, Zagrando had never actually seen an Emzada before. He had heard about them, particularly about how foul their lairs were, but he had never known anyone who had encountered one. The Emzaden rarely traveled far from their native land. They established Lairs on planets not affiliated with the Earth Alliance, like this one, and even when they were in such a place, they kept to themselves.
Even though Whiteley had called the Emzada “he,” Zagrando wasn’t so certain about the Emzada’s gender. He remembered hearing somewhere that Emzaden kept their gender quiet. But Zagrando didn’t want to rely on what he remembered, however, so he was just going to follow Whiteley’s lead.
Not that he had any choice. They were stuck in this foul room.
&n
bsp; Whiteley folded his hands together and bowed. “Great One,” he said in Standard. “This is the man I told you about. This is Zag.”
Great One? Zagrando didn’t know the protocol for addressing an Emzada, but he certainly didn’t like the implications of the term.
“Bow,” Whiteley whispered.
Zagrando felt flustered. He had a persona with Whiteley—a tough arms dealer persona—and for the first time, Zagrando wasn’t sure how that tough arms dealer would act.
He hesitated for a moment, and then he bowed. But he didn’t quite mimic Whiteley’s position. Zagrando didn’t press his hands together and he didn’t bow deeply.
“So,” the Emzada said, “this is the man in need of dedicated, thinking weapons.”
The Emzada’s Standard was excellent, his accent perfect. Whiteley had misrepresented the situation—again.
Zagrando swallowed hard. Some of that was nerves, but the bulk of it was his gag reflex. The stench—and the fact that the air felt coated with skin cells—bothered him. His stomach was doing a slow roll that he hoped he could keep under control.
“It is that man, Great One,” Whiteley said.
“He should speak for himself,” the Emzada said.
Zagrando debated doing so, despite Whiteley’s warning. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, glancing at Whiteley. Whiteley would have to tell him when he could speak.
Zagrando had to trust that Whiteley wouldn’t bring him all this way to screw up a deal.
“He is following protocol, Great One,” Whiteley said. “He has not been sanctioned to speak to the Emzaden.”
“I can sanction him,” the Emzada said.
“He is aware,” Whiteley said. “He is also aware that a single Emzada sanction holds less force than a sanction from the Emzaden Assembly. He would prefer the wider sanction if he is going to do business with the Emzaden.”
“Wise man,” the Emzada said.
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