Farfetch tdt-2

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Jindigar was dressed in loose white shirt and baggy yellow trousers of standard desert wear. He wore his usual yellow turban, and on top of it perched a cluttering piol, the male, Imp. Under one arm was a small, glittering square package, while in his other hand he carried a half-eaten ration bar. Frey followed, pulling his silvery desert cloak about himself, and together they negotiated the flimsy, improvised emergency ramp. Jindigar seemed to bounce deliberately, as if absently enjoying the swaying footing while munching his ration bar, though his overall manner was uncharacteristically somber. Testing his thigh?

  The sun turned the Dushau a dark purple, the color of dense shadow. Prey’s head was bandaged, but he had no trouble balancing.

  At the bottom of the ramp Jindigar set the snuffling, wriggling piol down, and the animal scampered through the gathering to his mate, greeting the Cassrian children effusively. The children shouted to Jindigar and gathered the ship’s two mascots into a tumbling heap.

  Jindigar unfolded the package he was carrying and, with a flourish, threw a desert cloak carelessly around himself as he approached the group. “Storm,” he called to one of the Lehiroh, “is the burial finished?”

  “Yes. We took all thirteen bodies into the drive chamber and laid them out respectfully.” He glanced at the others, grief in his eyes. “We took care of Bell, but we had no idea what to do for the others, if anything.”

  Jindigar scanned the group, and as he spoke, he revealed light blue teeth. “I believe we’ve all said our good-byes privately. It seems fitting that Ephemeral Truth become their tomb and our monument to the Allegiancy Empire.”

  “Jindigar,” said the older human woman, Viradel. “How can you set a monument to the Empire? The Empire’s out to kill every Dushau loose in the galaxy, and every friend of a Dushau!” She looked around. They were all here because the Emperor had confiscated their homes and businesses and condemned them to death because they’d helped Jindigar or other Dushau.

  Cutting off a rising mutter, the Cassrian male, Trassle, piped up in his reedy voice, trained to the single tones of standard speech, “The Empire’s dead but doesn’t know it yet. Dukes and Kings are still fighting each other for the throne, and I’ll bet it’s some Duke who’s sent that Squadron after us to revenge the Emperor. They’re not going to give up. Even if Ephemeral Truth could lift again, there’s no place to go. This is no time to set monuments. Let’s discuss how to lose ourselves on this planet before we’re caught.”

  Jindigar knelt effortlessly, smoothing a spot of sand like an artist preparing a canvas. Then, as he spoke, he drew a map with deft strokes. “We’re on the largest of the northern continents, but to the southwest quarter, with a formidable mountain range to the north. This is a desert valley, surrounded by wooded hills. The nearest edge of this desert is due east, which is the path the Allegiancy troops will search first once they locate Truth.”

  The Cassrian female, Allel, said, in her untrained, multitoned voice, “If we’d left the bodies strewn about, maybe the Allegiancy would think we’d all died. After all, there were seven other Dushau, some pretty badly burned.”

  “That’s disgusting!” spat Viradel, making the Cassrian recoil. But Krinata felt that the Cassrian’s sense of decency had been overridden by desperation. After all, she was a Cassrian parent with young to protect, and Krinata had seen the ruthless savagery she was capable of in defense of her young. It had saved Krinata’s and Jindigar’s lives.

  “Ugly,” agreed the Lehiroh, Storm. “But it might have been worth a try if it had any chance of succeeding.” He exchanged a silent glance with his co-husbands.

  Jindigar cut in. “I doubt such a ruse would help now. When the Squadron locates Truth, they’ll probably blast the ship because it was the instrument of our escape from the Emperor’s flagship, and the home of a Sentient who could break Allegiancy law. They may assume Arlai left trap programs aboard and not even dare to search it.”

  Prey, the Dushau youth, shuddered, and Jindigar gave him a silent paternal look before continuing. When he tapped the map with one long finger, Krinata saw he’d embellished it with artistic curlicues to create a work of art while they argued. “We’ll head northeast toward the foothills at the edge of the valley. Southeast of those foothills is a high plateau, and on the edge of the plateau should be a fertile area suitable for all our species. Distances? I don’t know. Arlai—” He glanced toward the buckled and twisted hull of Truth, swallowed hard, and continued. “Arlai hadn’t completed mapping, but I did see his scan of the area as we came down.”

  Charlie Gibson, who’d been elected second in command for the group’s ground activities, asked, “Any idea how far to the edge of this?” The experienced colony manager who’d been elected leader had died in the crash.

  “Oh,” said Jindigar, turning from them. He gathered Prey’s attention with a glance that prickled Krinata’s skin, then bent to pick up a handful of sand and squint northeast as it sifted through his fingers. She watched avidly as the two Dushau made rapport with the place. For centuries Jindigar had worked in the Dushau explorer teams, the Oliat, honing that singular talent. And he was the best.

  Recently she’d become Jindigar’s debriefing officer, a Programming Ecologist responsible for certifying new worlds. She had dreamed of going into the field as an Oliat Liaison Officer, helping to plant a new colony. Now she was living that dream—but without the full seven members of the Oliat team. They had only Jindigar and his young student, Frey.

  Jindigar turned back to them, momentarily shrouded in the distracted air of his Oliat skills, and she yearned to join him and Frey in the odd triune consciousness they had shared to escape from the Emperor’s flagship. But his indigo eyes were fixed on the distance as he said, “If we start now, we could reach the edge of this sand-sea by dawn. It’s another day’s hard march to water. The only problem is the windstorm that’s brewing. There’ll be some shelter from that at the edge of the desert.”

  “Isn’t there enough energy in that storm to bury the ship?” asked Frey of his elder.

  “Good observation,” granted Jindigar. “Here, the ship is our only shelter from the blowing sand. But if we stay, we may not be able to dig out and get clear before the Imperials find us. If we start, we must forcemarch to the edge of the valley and climb to shelter before the storm bits.” He glanced once more at the sky, brushing the last of the sand from his skin. “Does anyone want to sit here and wait for the Imperials?”

  There was a general murmur of negatives, and Gibson stood up to say, “Come, if we’re going to outrun that storm, we’ve got to hurry.”

  Jindigar sat staring at his map as everyone rose, breaking into groups and heading for the ramp. He added a finishing touch, then wiped the area clean and, with a few deft strokes, sketched a frolicking piol. To an objective observer he might seem untouched by tragedy, but Krinata sensed an undertone of anguish, and recalled how Imp, as a piol pup, had rescued Jindigar’s spirits by just being alive.

  Finally he rose and turned to go back inside while Krinata stared at the horizon that had captivated Jindigar’s attention. Sandstorm?! Why did that send preternatural terror through her nerves? Shuddering, she scrambled to catch Jindigar, drawing him aside at the foot of the ramp.

  “If the storm is that close,” said Krinata softly, “why don’t we make our triad again and push the storm aside?”

  “I’ve told you, Krinata, you can’t. You don’t dare join us ever again. I should never have allowed it, even once.”

  “But I could do it. I know I could.”

  He summoned patience to reiterate wearily, “Desdinda died while trying to make a tetrad out of our triad, and she was insane at that moment. You took the brunt of the shock because you’d had absolutely no training—Frey was hurt so he can barely tolerate the duad now, and I—didn’t get away unscathed, either. A triad is out of the question.”

  “We won’t know that until we try it,” argued Krinata, part of her acknowledging his expertise, but another pa
rt frightened enough of the sandstorm to try anything. She knew the danger. She’d seen Oliat members die when others of their team died. “We’ve all had time to heal—”

  Jindigar sighed. Frey had gone on into the ship, and the Cassrian children were chasing the piols up the ramp. He said, “This is no time to play games with your sanity. You’re lucky your imagination isn’t running wild during ordinary consciousness. Don’t even mink of experimenting with other states. I stand in awe of human mental pliability—but even humans have limits.”

  She pointed, a sense of outrage starting to build, as if her only chance at real life were being snatched away. “That sandstorm out there could scour the flesh from our bones. Isn’t it worth a risk to save the group?”

  “Krinata, I know you’ve never seen anything wrong with Inverting the Oliat function to affect the environment. But to us, it isn’t to be done lightly. It’s so dangerous, it’s often better to accept death. Even if we could triad, I’d never consider influencing that storm’s course. It’s not the Oliat way to step onto a world and arbitrarily remake it to our convenience.”

  His words made complete sense. No decent ecologist would interfere with such large natural phenomena without the guidance of a complete Oliat. But, irrationally, her whole body yearned to battle that storm and subdue it. She put it down to her enchantment with the triad rapport. That one taste of the multicentered awareness told her how it could be to perceive the whole ecology of-a world. That was what she’d been born to do. Any training, discipline, or purging she had to go through would be worth it.

  Then an odd thought occurred to her. They’re afraid to attempt a triad with me again!

  Seeing her capitulate, Jindigar turned and climbed the ramp with the Holot, Storm, and the humans, leaving Krinata to follow._

  TWO

  Sandstorm

  The interior of the ship had heated to baking oven temperatures, hotter than the open shade. They found the three Lehiroh and Frey using cutting torches to open the side of the ship to let them pull their anti-grav sleds out. Long ago they’d loaded the colonizing equipment onto the sleds. A mass of less portable items had been stowed in the crushed and inaccessible cargo holds with the two-seater sky birds Truth carried. The orbital landers and the atmosphere sky-birds were all useless now. So the only way to take the bare essentials with them was to pull the anti-grav sleds.

  Jindigar took up a cutting torch, only the set of his mouth betraying his distress at butchering his ship. Then, as they were guiding the sleds down the ramp, the Lehiroh instructing them in the use of the sled controls, Jindigar left to return minutes later with a long, flat box Krinata instantly recognized, a Sentient computer’s core, which stored the essence of personality if not all peripheral memory. Lovingly he inserted the box into a compartment in one of the sleds and then claimed that sled for his own.

  At first Krinata couldn’t imagine why he’d done it. Arlai couldn’t be revived without a higher technology than they’d be able to rebuild. Then she thought again. In perhaps a thousand years they’d have regained it, Jindigar would be here to use it, and Arlai would wake again.

  Minutes later they walked out of Ephemeral Truth and into the ankle-deep sands. She saw Jindigar caress the ship’s skin as they passed through the opening. Then, out in the direct sun, Krinata pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. Though her hair was dark, her skin was fair. Despite months of exposure to high-actinic light, she could get the burn of her life in such a desert.

  The padded sled harness fit her shoulders so she could lean into it, getting the massive but weightless sled into motion. The sled consisted of a thick platform housing its machinery, surrounded by a peg-and-rope fence set back from the edge to restrain the cargo, which was covered by tarpaulins of the heat-repellent fabric of the desert cloaks.

  On each of the four sides of the sled was a covered control panel with one conspicuous lever, the brake. The ones on either side were down to keep the sled from drifting sideways. She’d have to be fast with the brake if she stopped, or the mountain would float inexorably over her and into the sleds and people in front of her.

  Jindigar had placed Frey and Storm at the rear, towing the sled loaded with water and indispensable supplies, certain they could keep the pace. They had only one sled to tow between them, so if something happened ahead of them, one of them would be free to help. The two piols chose to ride atop this sled, and Frey made them a small lean-to for shade.

  It was past noon when they started, the hottest part of the day yet ahead. She slogged through the sand, turning her mind off, setting her body to endure. Jindigar said they’d make it, and everyone, even the Lehiroh, who were seasoned explorers, Oliat Outriders, believed him. And she’d heard then* leader, Storm, say that Jindigar hadn’t survived thousands of years on strange planets by miscalling sandstorms.

  As the afternoon wore on she grew accustomed to the thumping of her canteen against her thigh, the abrading sand in every crease of her skin, the desiccating heat. She had been strengthened by the hard life she’d lived since she’d defied the Emperor to break Jindigar out of prison.

  Gradually, without intending to, she began to move faster than those ahead of her, and rather than waste the momentum in the sled, she stepped out of line and passed them one by one, exchanging cordial words with everyone but Viradel, who looked her up and down as if Krinata were trying to show her up. The sun was perceptibly lower, beginning to blur behind a dirty haze gathering at the horizon, when Jindigar led them to the eastern trough of a huge dune that could provide some shade for a rest stop.

  She was tiring. It was getting harder to ignore the places where she hurt, but she was approaching Jindigar, who was towing his sled far in the lead, setting a cautious pace, working his eyes from side to side searching the ground. The moon, off to their right, was riding higher. Sunset would not stop them.

  She shivered in sudden dread of the desert night and fought a growing sense of menace as if she were walking into a nightmare where however hard she ran, she could not escape.

  Just then Jindigar turned his head, saw her coming, and gave what could only be a warmly welcoming smile. Suddenly the smile flicked through alarm to anger. He shrugged out of his towing harness, leaving it to trail in the sand as his sled kept going on momentum, and waded to her sled, nailless fingers working the controls adroitly. In seconds he had slowed and turned her sled, inserting it at the center of the line next to his own, dragging her with it.

  As he slipped back into his own harness he roared, “Are you trying to get yourself eaten alive by sandswimmers? I thought you were an ecologist!”

  “But—”

  “Didn’t you hear me state explicitly that no one should stray from the direct line of march?”

  Jindigar never gave orders, he made statements. But she’d never seen him angered by someone who ignored one of his statements. “I got going so fast, I couldn’t—”

  “Trying to wear yourself out before the night’s over?”

  “Jindigar, nothing happened,” she said reasonably.

  “No? You miss walking yourself—and one sixteenth of our gear—into a traplair and you say nothing happened?”

  Sandswimmer? Traplair? Tasting the words, she recognized them as generic terms for sorts of desert life she’d rather not meet on a dark night. She twisted to glance over her right shoulder at the strip of sand she would have walked on if Jindigar hadn’t pulled her into the line. She saw no sign of any animal lurking beneath the sand surface, but if Jindigar said it was there, it was there.

  She shuddered, but the sense of menace had evaporated. Had she picked up some awareness from the duad Jindigar and Frey maintained? “Thank you, Jindigar. I’m sorry.”

  He studied her as they paced side by side, his anger evaporating. “Not really your fault. I expect too much of you.” A troubled look crossed his dark indigo features. “I don’t know why.” Then he smiled, the warmth of welcome back again as he asked, in a softer tone, “Is your arm hurt
ing?”

  “It just aches, but I think the heal-jelly is working.”

  “Good,” he replied. Then, as if he needed to rationalize his interest in her, he added, “I hope the others are doing as well. Serious infection could jeopardize our survival.”

  “And what about your thigh? This is a hike, not a mountain climb. My thighs are killing me!”

  “The Dushau body handles infection a little better than the human,” he replied.

  That was the biggest understatement Krinata had heard in a long time. The Dushau were virtually immune to even the most virulent cross-species infections that had developed in the galaxy. “But you don’t heal so very much faster, and you were bleeding even more than I was.”

  “I took a blood replacement accelerator, and the heal-jelly is working.” He brought his ever-roving gaze to focus on her and said in a different tone, “Yes, it does hurt.”

  “I’m glad you admitted that., Maybe your thigh will tell you when us office workers could use a rest?”

  “Soon. Right in the shadow of that big dune, there. The sand should be cool enough to sit on by now, and there are no lurkers waiting to eat us. Also, notice how the ridge of the dune runs right along our course? It will shelter the sleds from the wind so we won’t have to chase them.”

  When they reached the dune and the entire marching column was in the shade, he glanced at her. “Ready?”

  “Anytime!”

  Before she knew what had happened, he had slipped out of his harness, ducked under his sled, and as it passed her by, he gave it a hefty shove. Only then did he notice she had not followed suit. “Need help? Here.”

  He paced with her, helping her worm her injured arm out of the harness. “I’ll shove it for you,” he offered. “Help me get the others unharnessed!”