“Please remove the guardians you have placed with the delphine. I am going to decant her for transport and they are in my way.”
“Why hurry? She won’t be leaving for three days.”
“I must monitor her sleeping heartbeat and the fetus’s until they have reached the proper depth. I have not enough room for my equipment in this cramped place. Perhaps you would prefer to take the responsibility yourself.”
“Never mind, I’ll call them off.”
Within a standard hour the watchman folded and pocketed his mini-skambi and the Varvani woman rolled up her ball of purple silk and speared it with her crochet hook.
:I am glad those are gone,: Kobai said. :They would never even look at me.:
“Now you may have a rest and a few dreams to yourself.”
:No, Iron Man, I want to look and feel and think as my true self until I sleep. I think I will have too long a while in darkness.:
The Lyhhrt left Kobai to her daydreams and went along the hall and down a ramp to the office of the Recordmaster. She was a hearty Miry woman with straight hair in a bun. She looked up from an endlessly scrolling display of vital statistics.
“Hullo, Doctor! Haven’t seen you for a while. Been wondering what you mean to do about the deadhead we’ve been supporting the last four tendays. A sister has turned up to claim her.”
“I had been saving her for autopsy but have had no opportunity. That is the reason I came. I will have her finished and packed for shipment by tomorrow.”
“Good! Those Pinxin never seem to last. Clients are always asking for them because they’re exotic and they’ll do anything that’s kinky, but they just seem to have no stamina. Get on drugs and OD before they’ve earned their money’s worth. Too bad we can’t get decent clones off them.” She looked glum for a moment but cheered up. “Got a new batch of Varvani coming. Less than zero on looks, but real hard workers—and tough! You won’t find any of them among the deadheads.”
“Quite,” said the Lyhhrt. Solthrees sometimes called this woman the Dead Reckoner. He went past her and down through long ranks of steel boxes, most of which contained the dead, until he reached one rack of narrow tanks that looked little different from the coffin cases. There were no more than four or five in suspension, waiting on the disposition of relatives. The Lyhhrt paused before the Pinxid woman’s body and extruding a sensor from the end of one fingertip plugged it into a socket and listened: Lubb-a-dubb-flick-dubb-flick-flick-lubb-a-dubb, said the two hearts.
Pinxin were the only two-hearted people beside Khahgodi that the Lyhhrt knew of on this world. He did not look at the woman’s flat-line brain signal, but summoned the gurney and had it load her, then called up a robot wagon carrying a life-bearing capsule. He directed these two containers past the Reckoner and her automatic checkout. “This life-case is being loaded and shipped to Shen Four,” he told her. “I have a requisition for it.”
“Yes, I see that. Go ahead.”
The two robot bearers carrying the steel case and the capsule followed him along the corridor and up the ramp; the three of them made a small cortege. In the upper passageway he passed the room where the Ix was staying, and before he noticed that the door was ajar his sensors perceived the sharp electric smell by which he knew that people.
:Lyhhrt!: the terrible mindvoice called.
“Yes?” The Lyhhrt stopped the gurneys and waited while the door opened. In the dim light even he saw little more of the Ix than the glittering of the jeweled harness; its surface negated light.
:There is a new agreement for your next term of service, Lyhhrt, waiting for you to seal it.:
“I know nothing whatever of that,” the Lyhhrt said steadily.
:Now you know it. It has been arranged with your superiors.:
“Is that so?”
The Lyhhrt went on and delivered the body and the life-capsule to the room where Kobai was waiting for coldsleep, then went upstairs to his laboratory office. He prepared a nutrient bath with a special mixture of neurotransmitters, and from the safe took a triply sealed vial of the hormone that would allow him to fission. He considered this for a long moment and returned it to the safe.
After he had fed and refreshed himself in the calming bath and placed himself in the plainest of his workshells, a dark matte grey with a few gold scrawls, he picked up his calls and found two impatient ones from Administration. “At your earliest convenience!” they cried, a degree of haste much faster than “asap.”
He presented himself there, to the tall Khagodi woman and the two Solthrees who formed the present triumvirate. “With all celerity,” he said, “I present myself.”
“Ah, Doctor,” said the Solthree woman, “you are the Doctor, are you not? You look somewhat less exquisite than usual.”
“I have been speaking to the Ix,” said the Lyhhrt. If the Ix had had a name and he had troubled to learn it, the Lyhhrt would not have addressed or referred to him by it. He considered names dangerously individualistic; Kobai and Lebedev were the only people he used them with. “I had not been told about a new contract.”
“An unfortunate oversight,” said the Khagodi woman. “The Ix are very eager to have you keep serving us.”
The Lyhhrt did not ask what new trade Zamos and the Ix were engaging in that needed his talents so badly. “I and my progenitors have served you for a long time. Are there no others you would find useful?”
The stocky slab-faced man said, “We need Lyhhrt and there are no others. It will not go well with you if you refuse.”
“And for how long?”
“As before, one of your cycles. We have the contract and we want it sealed now.”
The Lyhhrt’s workshell rattled and he said in a shaking voice, “I will agree if I must, but I have so seals with me, and there is still one day and ten Standard hours before my present contract ends. I beg you for one half-stad of freedom, so that I may say prayers and make my peace with the Cosmos and its Spirit.” Before anyone could answer he said, “Please. Allow me this much. Please.”
He could perceive that the triumvirate were amused to see the magnificently arrogant Lyhhrt begging so humbly. After a moment of collective thought the Miry woman said, “I think we just might allow that much.”
“Thank you,” he said quaveringly, and backed out of their presence, leaving them smirking with thoughts of further torment and plans for sliding out of this agreement.
“How disgusting it was, Lebedev!” the Lyhhrt said. His movements were jerky and his voice genuinely trembling. “I begged them! I said please, and again, please, as if I had learned to love slavery.”
Lebedev said, “If the oath binds you so strictly as you believe, it is destructive.”
“Yes, I know it, but I cannot help that.”
It was nine days since Lebedev had met with the Lyhhrt. Not a pleasant nine days, spent looking forward to being inhabited by the Lyhhrt. For some reason the thought had made his ear hurt.
“Nothing is wrong with your ear,” said the Lyhhrt. “Your pain is caused by fear. Do you think I have no fear of—” He stopped. Both he and Lebedev had been seized by mutual revulsion and would spend their whole lives in this bond. “We need not discuss it. Do not eat any more food today, Lebedev.” He took a flask from the desk. “Here is a potion I have prepared. There are nutrients and tranquilizers for both of us, and you must drink it tonight before you retire. When you wake it will have been done.”
Lebedev accepted the flask. It was a flat silver one with classical engraving, and looked as if it contained whiskey. How I wish it did! Ai Lebedev, what are you letting yourself in for now? and however did you get into this fix?
“In my room? You will look strange coming into that area.”
“I will take care not to look strange.”
They parted for the second last time without another word.
When he went to his room to change for his afternoon session at the skambi table, Lebedev found a little card shoved beneath his door: it told him his ser
vices were no longer required as of tomorrow. He did not know whether his discharge had been arranged by the Lyhhrt; it was his pass out of Zamos’s Gamblar. He stared sadly at his soup crock. He had eaten the last of its contents for lunch and it stood empty. It was too heavy to carry under his arm out the front door when he meant to leave quickly, and he had nowhere to deliver it, though he supposed for the sake of appearances he ought to make some kind of gesture. It was not expensive or valuable like a silver samovar passed down through the family for hundreds of years, but . . .
Dressed in fresh linens and closing the door behind him, he found Tally coming down the corridor toward his room. He had spent the night with her again half a tenday ago, and their coupling was one of comfort and warmth rather than passion, somewhat like eating a good soup. The thought of sleeping with Manador came into his head suddenly and made him grin; Tally took the grin for her own and her face brightened.
“Hallo, Lev!” She turned to match his walk and tucked her arm in his. “I heard some talk.”
“What kind?”
“Not very good.” She was smiling and nodding, leading him toward a sofa in Employees Common Area. “They like to have me serving them at private parties . . .” He saw that she was wearing an impervious net of very fine wire with, he thought, real diamonds in it; it fitted close to her scalp and her hair had been combed through it so all that could be seen was the occasional glitter. The gift, perhaps, of some old friend. “They get me to dress up like a whoremaster’s idea of Marie Antoinette, only at my age I don’t have to take the clothes off like the others do. And they like it if I have something to tell them, whatever I pick up at the stables. They don’t much like me screwing you—”
Lebedev, who had been sitting knee to knee with her, pulled away sharply. “Why then, Tally—”
“You think I give a shit? I’m just telling you what they’re muttering about. I don’t know why they’re worried about you talking with Ai’ia and the Doctor . . .” She did not look at him while she said this, and it seemed to him that she was warning him against telling her why. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if they didn’t give you this job just to keep track of what you’re doing? You know? Just because you were a rozzer?”
“You have a very good ear. Have you yourself ever thought of looking for another job?” She did not answer and he added, “At any rate, I have just received my notice.”
She murmured, “They’d never kill you inside here after the flap about that whore.” She turned to take his face in her hands and kiss his mouth with a dart of her tongue. “Goodbye, Lev. Watch your backside.” And she was out of his life in a flurry of lace and lilac talcum.
Kobai had been dozing, and when she woke she found the Lyhhrt standing by the coffin case, unsealing its hasps. :Iron man, what is that?:
“It is a dead Pinxid woman whose body has been kept working.”
:Her skin is very blue, blue as cold sleep. I think she is far from home.: She did not ask any more questions.
From his cupboard of marvels the Lyhhrt called out an insectile robot that lifted the Pinxid’s body out of the coffin case and placed it in the life-capsule. He covered it carefully with a blue gel of nutrients, reattached all the indicators, and sealed it with a metal plate engraved with instructions for handling the Enclosed Delphine en route to Shen IV.
He sterilized the coffin case with a blast of hot air, checked the spy monitors, which had been set to broadcast clips of him going about various tasks for his masters, and when he was satisfied that he was safe turned to the tank with the genuine delphine in it and placed his hands flat against the glassy surface, as Kobai had done so often.
:Now, Kobai, you are going to sleep, and when you wake up you will be free.:
:Yes!: She was deeply weary of all the long days in this prison, but her eyes were alight : I am thirsty for water that is more wild and cold than this . . . I am sorry I said all those mean things to you before I knew what a good friend you are.:
:You are not the first. But I have forgotten them.:
:You are the only true friend I have ever had and I will remember you forever, Iron Man.:
:And I—Kobai, dear friend . . . I will remember you as long as I/we can.:
He drained half of the water and added the sedative; she was only too willing to sink into a dream of home, where she saw herself in the tasks that had been a labor and now were a longed-for pleasure, carrying the sea-bladder lantern to light up the vein of gold, with the child against her belly and clasping her breast to suck . . .
With the water barely covering her he pressed a switch that lowered the tank wall into the floor, and his insect robot reached in over the free edge to pluck her out and put her into the coffin case. Before she could gasp, the Lyhhrt had the water-respirator tube in her throat to top up her lungs, and was listening with his sensor:
Lubb-a-dubb-flick-z-dubb-flick-a-lubb-a-dubb, said the two hearts of mother and fetus. He covered her body quickly with the blue gel and sealed the case with the metal plate informing shippers that the body of Io Adilon of Pinaxer would be outbound on the Miry ship Aleksandr Nevskii.
He followed the coffin on its trestle down the dim hallways of midnight to the kiosk of the Dead Reckoner. Her night replacement was a cheerful Varvani named Groad, who was free of morbid interests; the Lyhhrt almost liked him.
“Is that a gift for me?” Groad asked.
The Lyhhrt had learned that this kind of remark was humorously meant. “Only if you want a dead body.”
The Varvani peered at the record number on the plate and keyed it into his registry. “That’s Adilon, the one you were flatlining for autopsy. I guess she’s dead now.” He checked for heartbeat and did not hear any, the Lyhhrt made sure he would not. “Poor woman. She was alone and far from home. Was she ever a friend of yours?”
“Yes.” The Lyhhrt let the coffin run along the tracks into its niche with almost reluctant fingertips. He did not know that Kobai would not be discovered and reimprisoned, or that, if properly loaded and maintained, she would connect with the Blessed Themesta bound for Khagodis, or that once she was successfully in flight she and the fetus would survive these journeys. He was launching her as any alien child might send out a boat of leaves or bark down a stream that led to a great river.
Lebedev, Gold Copper and Silver
Moist from the bath-house, Lebedev found that his hammock had been replaced by a bed, too late for comfort. He sat on it and regarded the silver flask. He was trying to find a point at which he could have turned away from this course of action. It was not the particular moment when he had agreed to harbor the Lyhhrt for a day, he thought, but that instant when he had conceived the plan of risking everything and installing himself in this place. Half his motive was to expiate guilt for sending Jacaranda in here with insufficient defenses. As if you had more, Lebedev, you schmuck. And here he was.
He opened the flask and smelt the liquid. It had a mild “chemical” smell, like a doctor’s office. He poured it into a tumbler; it was brilliantly clear and very slightly viscous, like glycerine. Not to make a drama of it he drank it, rinsed the cup and flask, and lay flat on the bed. He did not think it deserved a na zdrovya.
The cleaning robot, embarked on midnight rounds, paused in the dim grey corridor outside Lebedev’s door, and several latecomers who could not see straight banged into it and cursed. “Executing self-repairs, self-repairs,” the robot muttered apologetically. When the curses had been replaced by snores and no one was stirring about, it extended a limb to push open Lebedev’s door and opened a hatch to let out what looked like a giant tarantula. The tarantula scuttled into the room and shut the door behind it, and the robot rumbled off.
This spider shape scrambled up on the bed and switched on an imager and a small intense lamp, then whisked the covers off to regard Lebedev’s huge repulsive body with its lens eyes, minutely examining the vast expanse of hair and skin.
It palpated and listened for resonance, found the area chosen for entry
in Lebedev’s abdomen above the groin crease, extruded a nozzle to spray the skin and its own limbs with sterilizing liquid. Now the abdomen of the spider-machine split and the Lyhhrt reached out holding a tiny case of minute medical instruments in one pseudopod; he opened this, selected an almost invisible scalpel, and made his cut. This was merely familiar landscape: the flashing blood, the slithery layers of tissue, the webby membranes suffused with capillaries that flowed red at every touch, but beyond that—
The Lyhhrt tightened his resolve and quickly—
—quickly
insinuated his body into the cavity, into the new universe between the external and internal oblique layers of the superficial muscles, steeling himself to control his hideous terror of the burning heat, the acid bite of the tissues, the drumming heart, the blood singing in its vessels as its thickly streaming cells swarmed through them, their bitter taste of iron, the bubblings, rumblings, pulsings, spasms—but his tormented nerve endings were already stimulating the secretions that would thicken his integument to insulate him from the horrors of this alien hell.
Clutching his remote-control system and his instrument case while he cut through tissues, snipped and tied off thready blood vessels, and fought through the fat cells in waves of nauseating tastes and smells, he forced pseudopod after pseudopod into tiny spaces until he was almost as attenuated as a membrane himself. Finally he was able to pull in his last tendril and use his controls to let the spider seal the wounds with collagen adhesives.
Then the spider’s lens eyes cast about the room. There was no disposal chute here, and the Lyhhrt, with a flinch of regret, sent his beautiful machine scurrying up the side of the waste bucket and dropping in, where it expired with a magnesium-flare of light into white ash.
Lebedev snorted gently, dreaming of his year in prison, a happy time in retrospect.
He woke with a sore belly that was swollen by the damage inflicted on it rather than the Lyhhrt’s mass. All of the mass was tucked to one side to minimize damage between the muscle layers, but did not make Lebedev look or feel grotesque. He had lost a couple of kilos in the last tenday out of anxiety, the way he had gained the earache. Except for the soreness and the tiny scar he could almost believe he had imagined everything.
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