“Here we go.” Ledi smiled, patting my hand. “Into the... (I missed the word in Pharize) “...gullet, as it were.”
I looked up, right as the sky was disappearing.
We entered a wide, dry tunnel.
The tunnel sloped steeply into the rock, curving down in slow spirals.
I tried to tear my mind off Nihkil and whatever was wrong with him by thinking again about what I knew of this place.
Nik told me about the divided nature of the capital of Palarine, which had the somewhat-confusing name of Pharae. It had been rebuilt over and inside the ruins of one of the oldest known cities on the planet, which originally belonged to the ancestors of the humans who lived there now. The two sides of the city that shared the same name, meaning the military half and the civilian half, were divided by a series of heavily-guarded tunnels that spanned the distance between the twin rock formations.
Nihkil mentioned that the rock formations themselves were at least partially, if not entirely, man-made, but he told me they were very old, too.
He also said I wouldn’t set foot on the civilian side of the city.
Well, not unless things went badly wrong while we were here.
Everyone gave me and Ledi a wide berth, I noticed. Most also gestured in deference as we passed. I distinctly got the impression that the hangar tunnel was a back door, though, not the main entrance.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched Nihkil walk alone behind Yaffa and Yulen. Yaffa wheezed as he walked, navigating the spongy robe with what seemed like an awful lot of effort. I found myself wondering if the guy left his comfy chair all that often, or maybe if something was wrong with him. Meaning, with his actual health.
Up ahead, a bright light shone between moving shadows. Sentries stood on either side of a high, translucent door.
Beyond that I heard... people. A lot of people.
I glanced back at Nihkil again, but he still wouldn’t look at me.
The line of sentries parted at a gesture from Ledi. Their eyes rounded when they saw me, then one grinned, nudging his friend. Before I could ask Ledi what that was about, parting doors let in a rumble of crowd-familiar sounds from the next room.
As those smoky, glass-looking doors opened, I could only stare up, my shoulders once more tense and fight-ready as people swirled before us like brightly-colored fish. They were talking and laughing, standing with projections by informational queues, walking purposefully crosswise to one another, staring up at moving walls. Odd stitches of fabric covered their bodies in moving pictures, often cut to display jewels embedded in flesh and even bone. Face and body paint accented their forms and features, studded with more sparkling stones, along with expensive-looking drapes over bright stockings.
Mixed in with the richer colors was a mass of dark uniforms and drab work jumpers, as well as more revealing costumes flashing mostly bare skin.
I felt both highly conspicuous and completely invisible as we entered that crush and flow of bodies, a pebble in a stream that the water avoided.
Once we were deep in the center of that hall, my eyes shifted up.
Walls stretched over ten stories high, the ceiling vaulted with transparent panes that let in streaming shafts of red-gold sunlight. Walkways spiraled off pillars the size of office buildings on Earth. Under one platform, a giant orb rotated like a miniature yellow sun. Animal-shaped arches stretched to the tallest points in the room, standing like sentinels and feeling older than the civilization they helped to house, as if the city had been built around them. A wall-mounted screen, easily five stories in height, displayed waving grass under a bright blue sky.
That last almost could have been an Earth billboard, if not for the extra moon.
Ledi leaned closer to me, presumably to be heard above the crowd.
“With a military link, there is sound and additional information.” He pointed at his neck, as if to indicate his own implant. “Nothing terribly interesting, but I could give you the frequency... ?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said in Pharize. “Thank you. Perhaps another time.”
Ledi smiled. “Remarkable. Scarce an accent... and polite, too.”
That irritated me.
Surprisingly, he noticed.
“I apologize,” he said at once. He even managed to sound sincere. “I confess I am a bit thrown as to the effect you’ve had on my friend.”
His gaze slanted towards Nihkil, as if that were explanation enough.
I didn’t return his smile, but decided to keep my distance, at least until I could get a better read on Ledi and his angle in all of this. Studying his face as he watched Nihkil, I tried to decide why his words irritated me so much.
“Dakota. Pay attention. You are being watched.”
I jumped a little when Nik’s voice rose in my ear.
I’d forgotten about the implant.
I glanced back and saw that Nihkil stood behind me now, his hands clasped at his back, his face blank in that way I knew from the ship. Clearly, if he hadn’t recovered from whatever bothered him on the landing platform, he meant for me to think he had. In any case, the warning was so normal and Nihkil-like that my muscles relaxed.
Following the motion of his chin, I noticed a tall man with a nondescript face.
He wasn’t blue-skinned like Yulen, but somehow, I got the same vibe.
“He belongs to another of the military council,” Nihkil told me through the link. “They will all have their spies come to look at you. Many of these will be morph, too.” His gaze drifted to the underside of the giant worm sac. “My people will protect us. I have heard there are rebels here, too... morph rebels, I mean. As well as bounty hunters.”
“Morph rebels, huh?” I joked. “Like you, Nihkil?”
His mind closed.
I felt the closure almost physically, in my body.
I glanced at Ledi, caught him looking between us again, right before he smiled. “Yes. Well. Did you have any, uh... additional questions, Dakota?”
My eyes and voice immediately went flat.
“No,” I said.
“Would you like a tour?” Ledi’s eyes flickered towards Nihkil, amusement still quirking his lips. “Would he permit it, do you think?”
“I defer that question to him, sir,” I said.
Feeling Nihkil’s amusement, I glanced up, startled.
“How much did it cost you to say that?” the morph teased.
I flushed, but smiled at his humor, in spite of myself. “You’re the one who said I had to be an obedient little bunny rabbit. So here I am... watch me hop.”
“Bunny rabbit?” Nik’s thoughts grew puzzled. “Dakota, what is a—“
“Nihkil, my friend... what do you think?” Ledi said.
His voice caused both me and Nik to turn.
Ledi smiled, looking between our two faces. “Could we take your ward on a short tour?” he said. “Now that Yaffa has decided to honor us no more, I thought we might take the opportunity, before her presence here becomes more widely known... ?”
I glanced around where we stood.
The fat admiral was gone. So was the supernatural, Yulen, although the male one that Nihkil said belonged to another member of the military council continued to stare at us, unblinking.
“It is her choice, sir,” Nihkil said. “I would like to rest before the hearing tonight, but she is free of this obligation.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
Ledi beamed. “Then you would allow me to escort her in your place, Nihki’?”
“Yes, certainly,” the morph said. “But I would appreciate it if this honor were not extended to any others at this time.”
“Of course, Nihki’, of course.”
“What are you doing?” I stared at Nihkil. ”You’re just going to let people wander off with me? Where’s your rampant paranoia when I need it?”
“He’s a friend. You can trust him.”
“I don’t even know if I can trust you!”
Ni
hkil was silent a moment. Then he shrugged.
“I have already said that the decision is yours.” He surprised me then by smiling, meeting my gaze for the first time since we’d reached the landing platform. “You’ll just have to find ways to defer to me later, Dakota.”
Startled, I gave an involuntary laugh. “In your dreams, morph-boy...”
“What is your answer, Dakota?” Ledi’s green eyes smiled, even as he continued to look more shrewdly between the two of us. “I won’t steal you for long... I know how tired you must be.”
Nihkil’s thoughts through the implant grew more warning.
“...He’s the only one you can trust, Dakota. Don’t go anywhere with anyone else. When my clan’s representative arrives here and procures the correct legal papers, you will have protection, but until then, please do not go looking for outside companionship.” Seeing my eyebrows go up, Nihkil hesitated. “…Call if you need me. Despite what I said on the landing platform, I won’t check in.”
Ending abruptly, he shifted his weight, glancing at Ledi again.
I stared at him, sure at first I must be understanding him wrong.
Then, realizing I wasn’t, I felt my jaw clench. I turned towards Ledi, looking him up and down. I made my appraisal overt that time.
Behind me, I felt Nihkil tense.
”Yeah. Okay,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind looking around.”
Nihkil folded his arms, his eyes nearly black.
Just then, a tall, slender woman walked through the middle of our little circle. She wore a form-fitting suit that covered her to the neck. Her hair was sleek and short, her eyes dark with some kind of powder. Although I don’t normally give a fig about such things, I found myself starkly aware of the contrast between the woman’s appearance and my own.
“...Clothes might not be a bad idea,” I muttered, following the woman with my eyes as she walked away. I gave Nihkil a glance. “I should blend, right? If I’m going to fly below the radar here, I mean.”
But Nihkil wasn’t looking at me.
Instead his eyes followed the woman in the form-fitting cat suit. An odd look came to his face, just before his gaze traveled down.
Disbelief, then anger flared in me, catching me off-guard.
“Nik?” I said. “What do I do about money?”
Ledi clapped him on the shoulder, half-laughing.
“Nihkil!” He waited for the morph to turn. “It is a wonder she will speak to you at all, much less defer to your judgment in anything of import! Do you really intend for her to have to ask for her own clothes? You didn’t dress her this way on purpose during the trip, did you?”
Nihkil refolded his hands, clasping them behind his back before he gave me a bare glance.
If he was embarrassed about being caught staring at that woman, I didn’t see any hint of it in his expression. Instead, the poker face was back, impossible to read.
“She never complained,” he said to Ledi.
I stared between them. “Yes, I did.”
Ledi laughed harder. Taking my hand, he placed it deliberately on his arm, holding it there with his fingers. I saw Nihkil’s eyes focus there, expressionless.
“You must be losing your touch, my friend,” Ledi said. “She doesn’t seem afraid of you at all. Not even a little.”
“It is not from lack of trying, sir,” Nihkil said.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. He was very scary. Especially when he forgot to shower.”
Ledi smiled at me, then up at Nihkil. “I think she actually likes you, Nihki’. Have you perhaps drugged her? Or is it the isolation from all others that did it?”
Nihkil shrugged. “She is from a primitive culture, sir.”
I burst out in a laugh, a more genuine one that time.
“Yes.” Ledi shook his head at me in mock-sympathy. “But these primitive humans can be volatile, Nihki’. And fickle. I wouldn’t count on her affections persisting.”
“Are you flirting with my wife, sir?”
“Maybe just a little, Nihki’... I think it’s possible you’ve left me an opening.” Ledi paused, winking at me before he glanced back at the morph. “I confess I am also somewhat interested to see if you might challenge me to a duel.”
At that, Nihkil paused.
He glanced at me again, his face blank. Then he looked back at Ledi, his brow furrowed, as if he were thinking.
“Is this a plan to ply her with expensive gifts, then?” he said after another pause.
“It had crossed my mind to try it, Nihki’... yes.”
Nihkil met his gaze. “Then, yes... perhaps we should duel.”
Ledi gauged the morph’s expression, smiling faintly. “I see.”
“Later then? After dinner?”
Ledi bowed politely. “Certainly, my friend.”
Giving a strange tip of the head, almost a wink, Ledi turned, pivoting me with him.
Still gaping at Nihkil, not only for the tone he’d used with me and the staring at that other woman, but now for his odd little back and forth with Ledi, I glanced over my shoulder, watching him look at me as we passed beneath the sun-like orb.
He didn’t change expression.
16
NEW CLOTHES
“SO TELL ME,” Ledi said, some span of minutes later. “Are the rumors correct?”
We strolled through some kind of market or bazaar by then, high above the cavernous hall, on another level of the compound. I was having trouble keeping my balance in the weaving and thrusting crowd, so for a few seconds I couldn't quite comprehend his question.
Ledi still held my hand firmly on his arm, but there was a brotherly kind of protectiveness to the gesture now as he steered me through the crowd, so I didn’t really mind. All trace of that brief suggestion he’d thrown at Nihkil had vanished, as soon as we left Nihkil himself.
Which pretty much confirmed my suspicions that all of that had simply been to yank the morph's tail, and had nothing to do with me.
Looking up from the kiosks and tables as we passed, I glanced at Ledi with difficulty, distracted every few seconds by more barely-there outfits, face paint, headdresses, alien-looking objects for sale at the various tables, oddly-animal machines, rows of difficult-to-identify food items laid out on what resembled upended tea stands and phone booths, discordant music piping through walls, smaller animals on leashes and flashing video billboards covering just about every wall or surface we ventured near.
Larger animals pulled my eyes, too, the first ones I’d seen since that planet, Trinith... bipedal lizards with boulder-sized heads, bearlike creatures the size of elephants harnessed to carts covered in flashing lights, a cat the size of a small horse and wearing a muzzle over razor-sharp teeth. I wanted to stop and stare at some of those, too, and to see if I could pick up some of the smaller items on one of the closer tables, but I let Ledi pull me along instead.
“...Has Nihkil been beating you night and day?” Ledi said, still smiling. “Letting my guards rape you? Refusing to let you sleep? Siphoning your blood to sell on the black market? Forcing you to wear only his underclothes?”
I blinked at him, then recovered.
“Well, I suppose the last one’s true,” I said.
Ledi laughed, touching his head in a gesture I hadn’t yet gotten a translation for.
“They can’t help it, you know,” Ledi smiled. “Nihki’ is such an easy target.” His eyes held a faint sympathy. “I hope he has prepared you for what to expect here. Already, there have been riots... and the bounties are astronomical. The Council Minister of Malek released a new one today that is fifty times the amount of the largest we usually see for live bio-trade.”
At my pursed lips and narrowed eyes, Ledi only shrugged.
“It will tempt others into the market, I'm afraid,” he said then. “Rumors of your supposed reproductive superiority have already spread, as well as word around the closing of the gates. The latter has obviously thrown quite a number of highly-skilled morph out of work... or at the ver
y least, out of work they enjoy doing a great deal more than the other tasks that are usually assigned them in the domestic sphere. It will likely increase the number of hunters working freelance, until the supply and demand balance out once again.”
Ledi’s words came out light, almost humorous as he spoke them. Even so, I heard the seriousness underneath, even apart from what he’d actually said.
Feeling my jaw harden, I glanced at the highest billboard at the end of the hall, the one I now suspected ran information directly from the military. It certainly looked similar to the one I’d seen in the Great Hall, what Ledi called that giant room where we first came in, by the tunnel entrance to the upper hangars.
As if Ledi had coordinated his speech with the news playing up there, I now faced visuals from one of the riots he'd mentioned. In one quick flickering of images, a group of men and women broke into a high-tech-looking building, carrying burning bombs in their hands reminiscent of molotov cocktails back home.
The recording shifted as I watched, still decorated at the bottom by their chicken-scratch writing in bright blue text. A view of a woman appeared, being beaten by a group of humans chanting what sounded like slogans.
When the next set of images showed a crowd of children caught in a fire set by yet another group of angry adults, I averted my eyes, feeling sick.
Ledi gave me a sideways look.
“Yes, well... some of these disturbances are not about you, of course,” he said gently. “There have been longstanding issues between those who promote the use of morph DNA to sustain our species and those who view such children as abominations...”
Ledi glanced up at the image of the burning children, frowning before he turned back to me.
“...We will use every security precaution at our disposal, too, of course,” he added. "The regime's official stance is pro-morph birth, as the laws certainly reflect. The requirements placed on morph to this effect are growing more stringent, not less.”
Ledi’s scrutiny of me seemed to intensify when I didn’t look over.
“...Nihkil is working very hard to get you away from all of this," Ledi said after another beat. "And I should not say it, but I happen to know he is trying very hard with you, as well. He lacks experience, but he does not mean you ill. I know he is possessive––”
The Morph (Gate Shifter Book One) Page 20