Arachne nodded. “I’ll do any part.”
“How?”
“With deadly knowledge.” Arachne waited for a moment for those words to sink in, waited for Zeus fully to realize she planned to tell him something that would lead to his death. She said softly. “Beware of Gallen. He is more than he seems.”
Arachne fell silent, and Zeus waited for her to continue, yet she did not speak. He stood over her, lingering. Her vague warning troubled him.
Gallen was a Lord Protector, a supreme fighter, but could he have hidden abilities, abilities like Zeus’s? Or was Arachne lying in an attempt to keep Zeus from attacking Gallen? If she wanted Gallen to live, perhaps she hoped Zeus would be frightened of him, would keep his distance. Or perhaps she spoke truly, and she planned to create some indecisiveness in Zeus, keep him from attacking quickly. Perhaps Arachne believed that if Zeus was indecisive, the Lord Protector could counter Zeus’s attack.
In half a moment, Zeus realized he needed to know more. Arachne would be reluctant to tell him. Yet he didn’t have time to wheedle information from her. So he came to a decision. He was standing over her, and with a swift but soft kick, he smashed Arachne’s nose and her head slammed into the wall with a thwack.
She half slumped to the floor, but her eyes were open. She stared around, dazed, and Zeus bent low and grasped a handful of her hair.
“Now, you prescient little bitch,” Zeus breathed into her ear. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you know about Gallen O’Day. What is he that I should fear him?”
For half a moment she did not speak, and Zeus looked around quickly. He did not want to be overheard, and he suspected that at any moment, Gallen or Maggie might come down this hall to the ship. He didn’t want Arachne warning them of his intent.
He took her by the hair and began pulling, dragging her toward the nearest door, an entry to the droids service chambers. Arachne recovered from being stunned and grabbed his wrists so he wouldn’t pull her hair out. She kicked, screamed. He considered killing her, but decided against it for now.
Instead he commanded the door to open, then commanded it to close as he passed, and he led her down the service tunnel, an entry broader than it was high, with minimal lighting. A hundred meters down the tunnel, he tossed Arachne to the ground.
“Now, bitch, tell me everything,” Zeus whispered. He placed the heel of his boot on her throat, ready to crush her esophagus if she didn’t answer.
“No!” she said.
Zeus was forced to punish her, but he dared not give a killing blow. Blood gushed from her nose, and both her eyes were beginning to blacken. Kicking her face again would gain him nothing. So he slammed her in the chest with his heel, driving her breast into her ribs.
She gasped in pain and began coughing. Whether she coughed blood, whether he’d punctured a lung, he did not care. He’d begun to lose patience.
“Tell me, big sister,” he growled. “I don’t want to be hard or, you. Were you lying? Who is Gallen O’Day?”
Arachne gasped, struggled to answer, and Zeus picked her up, by the material of her robe, pressed her against the wall.
“He’s … he’s Lord of the Sixth Swarm, you fool!”
The news astonished Zeus so much he stood up straight, let Arachne slide down the wall. He knew that if he were ever to gain position in this universe, he would have to fight the dronon. He’d imagined this would happen decades or centuries from now. Yet here sat Gallen, Lord of the Sixth Swarm, all unaware of Zeus’s intentions: Zeus only had to kill Gallen in order to take his place. It seemed … so fortuitous.
“You aren’t lying, are you?” Zeus asked.
Arachne coughed, spit blood. She shook her head. Zeus considered what to do next. As if reading his thoughts, Arachne said, “You don’t have to kill me. I won’t tell anyone.”
This annoyed him, the fact she knew his thoughts before he did. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you tell?”
“Because, I’ve already killed you,” she whispered. “I’ve told you the thing that will kill you. Nothing I do now will change that.”
Zeus feared she still withheld something, that she knew more about Gallen than she dared tell. She knew the Lord Protector could kill him, and she wasn’t saying how. He reached for her throat, and Arachne spit, “It’s not Gallen you should be afraid of, you fool! It’s power. It’s power!”
Zeus shook his head, not understanding.
“Imagine that today, even if you beat Gallen, even if you live out the day—why do you think he is here? He’s running from the dronon! The Lords of the Seventh Swarm are chasing him across the universe. Eventually they will find him.
“But what if they found you, instead? Could you beat them in single combat, could you best the dronon? Gallen knows he can’t. Death lies that way. Yet you run toward it. You seek his position.
“And what if you do happen to beat the dronon? What if you do gain a place of respect and power in this universe? What if ten thousand worlds elect you as their ruler, and you even manage to unseat the Tharrin? What then?
“I have already told you,” Arachne gasped, coughing. “Someone more ruthless and cunning than you will cut you down. If not in a hundred years, then in a thousand.
“And you will know, you will know all your life, that I told you it would happen. You will be forced to watch for it, to prepare. You will die the thousand deaths of cowardice before that one last one takes you by surprise.”
Zeus sat back and folded his arms. He’d always believed Arachne had more prescience than this, that she somehow saw what would happen an hour from now. In his heart he knew she really only understood people. Her knowledge was frightening, but more general than specific. She didn’t really know he would die by violence. Her theories were based only on some general beliefs about human nature and her own vain hopes for his demise.
But I won’t walk that path, Zeus told himself. When I am a leader, I will be kind. People will love me and protect me. They’ll keep my memories on file, my genome available on a hundred planets. They’ll build replicas of me for a hundred thousand years, until I am wearied by mortality, and even then, my consciousness will be stored in the Omni mind, so I’ll live as long as I desire.
He stepped back, wondering once again what to do about Arachne. He couldn’t let her go tell everyone he’d been beating information out of her.
“You said I don’t have to kill you?” Zeus asked.
“Yes, please, let me go!” she whispered. “I won’t tell what happened here. I’ll say I fell down the stairwell outside my room. You know how steep it is. No one will doubt me.”
Zeus nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, as, if the matter were settled. He turned away.
Abruptly he spun back, kicking with all his might at where her head had been. Surprisingly, she had moved, just a bit, so her chin was lifted to connect precisely with his heel. She’d relaxed her neck enough so it snapped cleanly.
She pitched sideways onto the floor, her neck twisted at an exotic angle, blood pooling on the stone floor by her nose.
Zeus stood, astonished, confused. She’d known at that last moment he would spin, deliver the death blow. She hadn’t tried to run from it. She’d embraced it.
Indeed, she knew Zeus so well, she must have come to meet him this morning, knowing she would die.
If that were true, she’d sacrificed her life. But why? To deliver a message? To tell him that Gallen was Lord of the Sixth Swarm? No, she hadn’t wanted to tell him that.
No, her message had been simple: walk away. Walk away from power. You are too imperfect to hold it. It will lead you to destruction, and will bring misery to others. Felph created you by mistake. You are a mistake.
It was a hard message to hear. Obviously, Arachne held Zeus in low regard. Certainly, it had been a hard message for her to deliver, considering what it cost her.
If she bore the message knowing the consequences, then should I not listen? Zeus asked himself.
Too late. Too late to ask th
at question. I’ve killed my sister. I am committed to a course of action. I must move forward.
Yet Zeus knew that he wasn’t committed. Arachne had given him the answer. Live in the desert. Hide. You don’t have to kill Gallen, you can try to hide from what you are.
Am I so ugly, Zeus wondered, I must remain hidden, covered? Zeus looked for a place to hide Arachne. He couldn’t let her corpse be found. The solution turned out to be obvious. Down the corridor from him were recycling chutes where droids disposed of excess food, which was ground into compost.
Arachne always liked the gardens, Zeus thought. Now she would feed the flowers. He pulled her down the hall and slid her into a chute. She would stay in the gardens forever.
Zeus used a strip of cloth from Arachne’s dress to wipe her blood from the floor, tossed it after the body, then went to begin the hunt.
Chapter 27
Gallen looked through one of the Nightswift’s viewers for signs of a Qualeewooh flying over the red desert. He was searching the sky, one square kilometer at a time, scanning images of the rim rock, and the yellow-and-orange sands below. The ship’s long-range sensors could give good visuals on any Qualeewooh within fifty kilometers.
The ship hovered twenty kilometers in the air, and as Gallen conducted a visual search, the Seeker Maggie had made circled Felph’s palace on a wide trajectory.
They had been hunting for two hours. Gallen had asked the ship’s AI to display anything with a wingspan of more than four feet. So far the AI had shown nothing, but suddenly Maggie’s Seeker picked up a scent and rocketed north on a zigzag course.
Gallen could see nothing in that direction; he ordered the ship to watch for him while he rested his eyes.
Gallen let the sensors on his mantle show him the scene behind his back. Orick, Maggie, Tallea, and Zeus all sat on the bridge behind him.
Orick had been teaching Tallea. He said, “‘Then the disciples went to Jesus, and asked, Lord, if a man sins; then repenteth afterward, and sins. again, how many times shall we forgive him? ‘Til seven times?’
“Jesus answered, ‘I say unto you, not seven times, but ‘til seventy times seven.’ “
Tallea asked, “Four hundred and ninety times? Why that number?”
Orick sighed in exasperation. His lesson on repentance and forgiveness seemed taxing for the bear. Orick’s Christian concepts seemed almost beyond Tallea’s grasp, but Orick had understood these concepts since he was a cub. The knowledge of such things was in the air back on Tihrgias.
“It’s not the number of times you forgive that’s important,” Orick answered Tallea. “It’s just a metaphor. What Jesus really meant was that we should continue to forgive offenses, even when we’ve tired of it.”
Zeus asked Orick, “This god of yours, Orick, why does he care what we do?”
“He is the father of our spirits,” Orick answered. “If you had a child, and I harmed it, you would rightfully take offense. In the same way, if you harm God’s child, He takes offense.”
Zeus said, “You say your god is forgiving. But who will he forgive? And what?”
“He will forgive you,” Orick said boldly. “He has said ‘Though your sins be as, scarlet, yet shall they be white as snow.’”
Zeus looked away. His long black hair was mussed, his dark brown eyes intense, brooding. His jaw quivered, as if in anger or fear. This talk of sin seemed to aggravate him.
Zeus suddenly whirled back toward Orick. “Quit staring at me, bear! I don’t need your repentance!”
“I … I’m sorry,” Orick said. “But you look—agitated. I thought maybe I could help.”
“I don’t need your help,” Zeus said.
“Perhaps you need God’s help,” Orick answered.
Zeus stood abruptly, turned his back to Orick, and gazed into the monitors above Maggie’s chair. He said, “There’s our quarry!”
Maggie had aimed her monitor well north of the Seeker, where two lonely Qualeewoohs flapped their wings slowly in the morning light. The picture was grainy, but Gallen could clearly make out the dark feathers.
Gallen said, “Ship, send, the Seeker north at six hundred kilometers per hour until it intersects those Qualeewoohs. I want to see how they smell before we go in.”
“Affirmative,” the Al said.
Gallen’s mantle whispered a warning, flashed an image of Zeus standing behind him, slightly crouched, as if ready to spring. Zeus’s hand strayed to the. pistol holstered on his right hip.
The bears crowded near to look at the screen, unaware of Zeus. Gallen could see from Zeus’s shaking hand, from the quivering jaw, he wanted to draw his weapon and fire. Yet he was afraid—for good reason. Gallen realized, Zeus doesn’t know the powers of a Lord Protector.
Go ahead, draw, Gallen silently urged. Gallen would spin and shoot before Zeus knew what hit him.
Zeus hesitated, eased his stance. He’d decided to wait.
So we wait, Gallen thought. Yet he wondered at the reason behind Zeus’s show of aggression. He doesn’t trust me to bring in the Qualeewoohs, Gallen knew. But something more seemed to be going on.
Gallen took the helm, brought the ship down, keeping the Qualeewoohs in sight. The ship bounced as it pounded through air currents, shaking the cameras.
In moments the Seeker screamed up behind the prey.
When the Qualeewoohs sensed the pill-shaped Seeker on their tails, the birds split—one right, one left—and hurtled to a small hillock crested by standing stones.
“Quarry identification is positive,” the ship’s AI whispered, its deep voice filling the helm.
The Seeker followed the Qualeewooh that had split right. Winging toward a cleft in the rocks, the Qualeewooh spun in the air, folding its wings to make the narrow escape.
The Seeker, traveling at just under ninety kilometers an hour, could not match the bird’s deft maneuver. It slammed into a stone abutment and exploded into a fireball.
In seconds Gallen’s ship reached the site. The Qualeewoohs dived into the rocks, seeking shelter in a crevice. On the barren plain beyond this rock pile, Gallen didn’t see so much as a bush or gully for a kilometer. He’d cornered the Qualeewoohs.
Gallen reached into his pack, pulled out the Qualeewooh translator Felph had given him, and hooked it to the voice mike he’d been carrying ever since he’d confronted the Lords of the Sixth Swarm on dronon.
That done, Gallen opened the ship’s hatch and called, “You two in the rocks, come out.” His voice rang as if with a shout, echoing back from the stone walls below.
Gallen waited, but the Qualeewoohs didn’t emerge from hiding. He repeated the order.
After a full minute, he looked over at Orick and. Maggie. “I guess I’ll have to go get them. Anyone want to follow?”
He didn’t want Maggie to come, felt relieved when she declined. Orick said, “They won’t be so afraid if you meet them alone. Maybe it should just be you who is talking to them.”
“Good point,” Gallen said.
Zeus immediately grumbled, “I’m coming, too.”
Maggie lowered the ship a meter from the ground, and Gallen climbed down, followed by Zeus. The hillock stood no more than sixty meters high, yet Gallen found it a rough climb up the huge stone slabs, leaping from foothold to foothold. He stretched his senses, let his mantle magnify incoming sounds. Everything was still. He ordered the mantle’s motion detectors to kick in.
He wasn’t afraid. Instead he felt coiled, ready. He’d hunted more dangerous prey. Yet the Qualeewoohs couldn’t be ignored as a threat. One had mastered the art of aerial decapitation.
Together, Zeus and Gallen reached the top of the hillock, stood on a huge flat rock. Gallen looked down on all sides. To the east, he heard a scratching sound, something scraping rock as it tried to dig deeper for cover.
“Come out,” Gallen said. “We must talk.”
Almost instantly he was aware of a form to his right, swerving up to meet him. It came so fast, only his mantle let him react. He d
rew an incendiary rifle, leveled it at the bird.
A Qualeewooh whipped up the ravine toward them, batted the air with its wings so it hovered nearby, staring at. them. Gallen hadn’t been prepared for the awesome sight.
The bird was huge, at least thirteen feet at the wingspan. Forever after, he’d hold the image of that encounter, the Qualeewooh beating its wings, the wind coming off them like a storm, the dark purple brooding of its feathers, the strange black mask over its long face, filigreed with swirls of silver, the dark eyes, like black quartz with a tinge of violet, staring at him.
Gallen wasn’t prepared for the intelligence in those eyes, the intensity, the crazed gleam. The Qualeewooh opened its mouth and whistled, a strange sound that somehow reminded Gallen of ropes twisting in the air. Gallen saw rows of teeth in that deep, beaklike face.
“Even if you take my mask, you will have no soul,” the Qualeewooh whistled.
Gallen pointed his rifle at the Qualeewooh’s breastbone. “If I wanted to wear your mask, you’d be dead. I came to talk.”
“Speak,” the Qualeewooh whistled. Only then did Gallen notice that the creature bore a thin blade, a scimitar, in its left hand. The small hand protruded from the apex of the wings, and the Qualeewooh had expertly concealed the blade in its pinion feathers.
“You killed our friend,” Gallen said. “Yesterday. You ate him.”
The Qualeewooh swooped forward, landed on the rock beside Gallen. Standing up, it was nearly as tall as a man. It held its head back on a snakelike neck and stood for a moment gazing at Gallen, just blinking.
“We killed an animal,” the Qualeewooh said. “Not human. It had wings.”
“It was a human with wings,” Gallen said. “He was my brother!” Zeus shouted.
The Qualeewooh made a high, keening whistle, and bobbed its head up and down rapidly while blinking. The translator on Gallen’s lapel interpreted the keening wail. “Noooooo!”
The Qualeewooh waddled forward, extending its neck, and laid its head on the ground, twisted up slightly to the side. “Blood debt we owe. Blood debt. Two lives for one.”
With the sound of that wail a second Quaieewooh, a small and beautiful female, scrabbled from the rocks, winged its way up the slope, and lit nearby, bobbing its head, calling, “Two lives! Two lives!”
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