To Trade the Stars

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Slowly, steadily, another presence formed. An unfamiliar, hesitant one. An older—or was it younger?—Symon. A Symon remembering—or was it reliving?—his mind reaching out, sensing those around him. A being of Power, surrounded by—

  Madness.

  But not his. Others’. They were minds Symon healed, slowly, carefully, with skill Morgan recognized with a shock as like his own. Then, one day, the touch of a mind that was different—a mind that hunted the healer. He was repairing damage done to a purpose, restoring memories sealed to protect an alien secret. That must stop! With its inHuman power, this mind reached into Symon’s, distorting his healing skill into something else, something obscene. And what had been Ren Symon was sundered in two, half fleeing what he’d been forced to become, half rejoicing in the ability to cause pain.

  Not madness. The Clan, meddling with a Human mind, uncaring as to the result as long as they kept their existence hidden and Humans conveniently unwitting hosts. It would have been kinder—and safer—to have killed Ren Symon that day. But the Clan, Morgan knew, prided themselves on subtlety. He felt a wave of grief.

  The other presence responded. Jason? What are you doing here? Disbelief.

  I came for you, Ren.

  Fool stunt. Gruff concern.

  Only if it doesn’t work. You are ready, aren’t you?

  There was a growing pressure on Morgan’s mind. He resisted. Come with me, Ren.

  I’ve forgotten the way out. Anxious wonder.

  Just follow me, Morgan sent gently, and concentrated.

  “Gods, boy, that was a fool stunt.”

  Morgan smiled to himself. “More sombay?”

  Ren nodded, then winced as the motion jarred the wounds on his face. They could both use time in the Fox’s med cocoon, but that was a luxury Morgan, for one, couldn’t afford. On the whole, they’d come out even.

  I won.

  Morgan tried to raise one eyebrow at this, but it was too swollen. “Let’s call it a tie and promise not to go for best two of three, okay? I’ve a wife who likes my face as it is.” The words were light, but with purpose. He studied Ren’s face, seeing changes beneath the bruises: age instead of energy, a hint of peace instead of intensity. Pain, but this time good, honest pain that didn’t cause pleasure.

  “You’ll get Sira back,” Ren replied. “The Drapsk—I don’t now why they wanted her so badly, but it wasn’t to harm her. They were angry at me for—” As he hesitated, Morgan began to speak. Ren stopped him with a shake of his head. “It’s okay. There’s lot in my memory I wish you’d lost for me, Healer, but not that. You were right, you know. I didn’t hurt her. I couldn’t. Sira ... when I held her in my arms, sensed her Power, smelled her hair...” He smiled despite the split lip. “I’d never imagined anything or anyone so glorious. Even as I was, I could never have harmed her. Can you believe me?”

  This was the Ren Symon who’d stepped into the firelight, so long ago, where a young, frightened Jason Morgan had sat, helpless to keep away the violence, grief, and fear in the minds around him, worn by his own grief and loneliness, unable to put a name to what made him different. This was the Ren Symon he’d appeared to be, and now, Morgan thought with a deep sense of rightness, this was the Ren Symon he had been once before.

  “I believe you,” Morgan said a bit unsteadily. “She has that effect on people.”

  “We’ll get her back.”

  “Which will require a visit to the Heerama.”

  Symon chuckled, a warm sound that invited Morgan to share a joke. “Just don’t drink anything. That was my mistake. One sip and I was in that box.” A shadow seemed to fall across his scarred face. “Jason, they might have thought they were offering me to you in trade, or as a delaying tactic. The Drapsk are capable of either. But they could just as well have hoped I’d dispose of you. I’d planned—well, let say many things have changed for the better, shall we? Though not your left hook,” this with a pensive, thick-fingered hand probing his jaw.

  “I don’t get much call for it,” Morgan said apologetically, showing Symon his force blades.

  “Nasty. I suppose I should be grateful you were mad enough to prefer a more traditional pummeling.”

  Morgan shrugged, a painful movement. His blue eyes became dark and troubled. “Be grateful I wasn’t. It was close, Ren. You know it was.”

  “Never,” Ren Symon assured him. “Believe me, I’d have known. You were never going to be the monster I was, Jason. No matter what I did, no matter what anyone else did. That’s why Sira picked you. Not for the Power and tricks—for what you are. What other fool would risk his life—and hers—to heal his worst enemy? Don’t shake your head, Jason. I was there and I—I know that’s what you did. And I’ll never forget it.”

  Blue eyes met brown in a moment of complete understanding. Then, Morgan stood. “I have to go,” he said. “Will you be all right here?” He might have healed the damage the Clan had done to Symon’s mind, but at a cost. He could feel the other’s weakness, the effort Symon maintained to keep sitting upright. “I still wish you’d go in the med cocoon for a day at least.”

  “While you have all the fun?” A pause. “Remember what I said and be careful around the featherheads. There’s something going on that’s too important to them.”

  “Which is why I’ve called in reinforcements,” Morgan explained with satisfaction. Hard to delay when all he wanted was to rush over and demand Sira’s return, but the Drapsk were unlikely to open their ports simply because he asked. “Bowman’s Conciliator will be finsdown within the hour. The Makmora is on her way back. I’m expecting their calls any minute.”

  “Ah. A man with friends.” Another fleeting shadow. Given Symon’s past, Morgan decided, there were bound to be many of those. There was nothing Morgan could do about that without erasing those memories—which would erase Symon as well. “Friends who have every right to kill me.”

  “Friends who will believe me when I say you aren’t the same person, Ren. Not anymore.”

  Symon laughed. “As long as you stand in front of me next time Huido drops by.”

  The galley com sounded an alert, silencing them both. Morgan gave Symon a wild-eyed look of hope before running out the door and down the corridor. Symon watched him leave, then slowly dropped his face into his hands, shoulders hunched, and began to shake.

  “I didn’t call you, Rael, because I don’t trust your hosts.” Morgan had been surprised to find the Clanswoman the second caller waiting on the Fox’s com—not so much because he didn’t think she’d find out about Sira, but because he didn’t think she’d be inclined to use the technology. “Is Copelup there?”

  Her voice was low and exasperated. “Of course he’s here. He’s the one who was able to arrange this call—after I’ve been trying to get access to the com for hours. You now what they’re like.” A sudden urgency. “Morgan—Acranam’s sent out her fosterlings—one’s been killed already. What’s happened to Sira—?”

  “Mystic One!” Morgan could just picture Rael’s expression at being interrupted by the Drapsk. “It is I who had to contact you. You are insisting the Makii return where the Heerii are in ascendance. Why?”

  There was no point in secrecy now, Morgan decided. “The Heerii have kidnapped Sira and are holding her against her will,” he countered angrily. “Why?”

  There was a confused thumping from the other end. Morgan had an image of Copelup turning into a ball and Rael throwing him against the nearest wall. “Why are you still on the Fox?” Rael demanded. “Go and take her away from them!”

  “That’s the idea, Rael,” he said expressionlessly, thinking of the previous message, the one that meant he’d made the wrong choices all along. “There’s one problem,” Morgan told her. “The Heerama left Ettler’s Planet, no destination filed. They could be anywhere.”

  A quiet voice intruded into the shocked silence. “I put a tracker beacon in Sira’s flute case.”

  “Who is that?” Rael asked suspiciously. Morgan looked at Sym
on, standing in the entrance to the bridge. The other shook his head slowly, a wistful expression on his face.

  “An old friend who’s been helping out,” Morgan told her.

  “Such a beacon will tell us how far ahead they are,” Copelup’s voice quivered with strain—or was it a very uncharacteristic rage? Morgan wondered suddenly. “But I already know where they must be taking the Mystic One. Oh, that Drapsk could be such fools!” almost a wail. “The Heerii have believed the Lie. They—”

  Morgan gripped the armrests and leaned forward. “Where?!” he shouted.

  Copelup had been reduced to babbling: “To the Dark One. They take Sira as a peace offering to the Dark One. He will consume her and so doing will consume us all. The Heerii are wrong, and Drapskii is doomed; we are all—” An ominous silence.

  Rael’s voice: “Morgan? Copelup’s rolled up. Do you want me to find another Drapsk?”

  Morgan felt a comforting hand on his shoulder and braced himself. “See what you can get out of them, Rael,” he ordered quietly. “I’ll do the same here. The Makmora is on her way—they may be more forthcoming about one of their own Tribe.

  “Meanwhile,” he added, “the Fox is going to follow that beacon.”

  The com light went dead and Morgan looked a question at Symon. The other Human flushed under the strips of medplas, but answered it. “Did you really think I’d trade Sira to the Drapsk without a way to get her back?”

  “You’d doublecross a Tribe of Drapsk?”

  “Crazy even for me?” Symon lifted his hand from Morgan’s shoulder, going to sit on the copilot’s couch. “I couldn’t stop myself. All that Power,” he mused, looking down at his outstretched hands. “I could feel it. I had to have it. The Clan children had the potential—I could sense it in Ruti—but Sira—she was, is, one of a kind. And—” His look promised nothing but the truth, however bleak, “—she was yours. I wanted whatever you had. I wanted you. Jason. I didn’t know why, then. Somehow, through all of it, I must have known you were my only chance at salvation.” A gruff sound, not quite a laugh. “Listen to me. I sound like a Turrned.”

  Morgan couldn’t speak, so he stood and went over to the panel in front of Symon, rapidly punching out a series of buttons before standing, his hands steepled together, to concentrate. The mindlock responded to his thought, activating the control that flipped the panel and brought up an array of sensors and tracking equipment that should have been removed when the former Patrol ship was transformed into a freighter. Symon grunted approval and came to stand beside him, selecting a frequency.

  The panel hummed happily as it displayed an acquired signal. “There she is,” Symon told Morgan huskily.

  “Then that’s where we’re going,” Morgan replied, eyes locked on the display.

  Chapter 21

  THE Heerama went translight without her Captain or crew informing their passenger—me—where we were going.

  I didn’t need to be told. Given my recent visitor, it was a safe bet we were heading for the Rugheran homeworld. A short trip, as translight sliced space, from Ettler’s Planet. Had we been there? Had my dream of Morgan been possible because he’d been so close? If I wrote this into an entertainment vid, no one would believe it.

  I couldn’t believe I was still stuck in the Heerama’s cargo hold. The stasis chamber at least offered distraction—not that I was inclined to enter the M’hir to be entertained by my seducer. Hammering on the door had only tired my arms, since Drapsk liked a lot of padding—of the soft, pink kind—in their ships. I’d tried tossing the furniture, but it simply sank into the floor to avoid me. A few bouts of primal screaming had provided a moment or two of satisfaction, and a sore throat.

  Time, I’d decided, for something sure to attract their attention.

  One of the mundane truths of interstellar commerce was that transporting goods required a certain inevitable standardization of technology across species’ lines. First, there was the principle that what worked for one species was likely to be what worked for another. So some technologies, such as antigrav units, tended to be common to most spacefarers from the onset. Or they were hot trade items during first contact.

  Second, was bureaucracy. Port Authorities loved it. Cross-species safety regulations were simply wonderful things: those who complied made the authorities happy; those who failed to comply paid fines, again creating joy.

  The upshot of this was a multitude of technological congruencies, including that every ship’s hold—Drapsk, Human, Scat, Whirtle, Ordnexian, Retian, regardless—must have simple manual controls to vent the hold to hard vacuum, in case of emergency. By that, Port Authorities meant the presence of unexpected biological guests in ships entering their particular system. The Drapsk had concealed theirs under more of the soft pink lining to their curved walls, either deliberately or not, but I’d more than enough time on my hands—and motivation—to locate it.

  And I could be considered an unexpected biological guest. Feeling quite proud of myself, I activated the venting sequence by the nonspecies’ specific and highly practical means of pulling down the lever. Then, I sat down to wait for my hosts to remember my existence and storm through the door.

  After a few minutes, I began to contemplate such unforeseen factors as whether the Drapsk were engaged in gripstsa or some other preoccupation which might keep them from immediately noticing their hold was venting its air.

  A few minutes after that, I began to calculate how much time I had before such notice became rather critical to my survival.

  And shortly after that, breathing more rapidly and feeling a growing chill in what air remained, I developed a pretty good idea of what Morgan would have to say about this terrific plan of mine.

  Fortunately, that was when a roar of fresh, warm air came blasting in from newly opened grates overhead and the door opened, revealing a mass of agitated Drapsk, three of whom dashed to the venting controls. The rest came hurrying over to me, touching me with their antennae as if frantic to know I was all right.

  Dear, demented, Drapsk. Now that I had their attention, it was up to me to accomplish something by it.

  Access to the bridge was a start. I doubted Captain Heeru was gullible enough to completely believe my fervent gratitude for his timely rescue, or that the venting lever had dropped to the “on” position by itself. But he did seem to appreciate that I was going to be more trouble in the hold than roaming around.

  I found the Heerama’s bridge familiar. If it weren’t for the blue-green antennae instead of the purple-pink of the Makii, I’d have sworn I was on the Makmora. I supposed duplication was the best approach, since this crew could be Makii after they returned to Drapskii. It would be, if I had any say about it. I wondered, but didn’t ask, if the ship’s name would be changed.

  Heeru had assigned a member of his crew, Heeroki, to be my constant companion. As I’d been told in no uncertain terms to stay on this stool on the upper level of the bridge, and no other Drapsk approached me, Heeroki was my only source of information.

  Unfortunately, he seemed in training to become a Skeptic.

  “Don’t you think it might be helpful if I understood more of what the Heerii need from me?” I asked. It was the latest incarnation of the question and I had little hope for it.

  Sure enough, Heeroki—droll even for a Drapsk—sucked a tentacle thoughtfully, for a very long moment, and then said: “No.”

  I contained my temper, but my hair was never tactful. I could feel it rising and an agitated lock or two whipped the air beside my cheek. “My dear Heeroki,” I said as calmly as possible. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You are the Mystic One. You are Clan. You are Sira di Sarc and Sira Morgan. You are the life and business partner of Captain Jason Morgan, Human. You are—”

  “Fine,” I interrupted. “Do you know what I did for Drapskii? Were you there?”

  “You helped reconnect Dapskii to the Scented Way,” he said, antennae becoming still for the first time, as if Heeroki suddenly pai
d more attention to me than the Drapsk com traffic flowing overhead. “I was there.” Just as I began to feel I’d made progress, his voice turned stern. “You put the Makii in ascendance on Drapskii.”

  “Everyone seemed to be celebrating, Heerii as well as Makii,” I countered. “Why?” Morgan had frequently cautioned me about leaping to misunderstandings about alien cultures. At this point, well beyond potential misunderstanding and probably into its consequences, I required information more than tact.

  “Drapskii is all Drapsk,” Heeroki stated, as if obvious. “What you did benefitted us all—but it wasn’t finished.”

  “That’s why I sent Rael and Barac, the other Mystic Ones, to Drapskii. To complete what I started.”

  “They arouse Drapskii,” he nodded, plumes waving gracefully. One tip tickled my nose, and I forced back a sneeze. “This is essential and we are grateful. But only you can offer completion.”

  A careful rephrasing. I had no doubt I’d just been told something important, something significant. Unfortunately, one probably had to be Drapsk to understand what it was. Still, I filed the information away. “So you are taking me back to Drapskii,” I deduced, feeling better already.

  Three tentacles slipped into his mouth. Then a fourth. No reply. I lost a bit of my confidence. “You are taking me to Drapskii, aren’t you?”

  “You have many questions, Mystic One,” Captain Heeru stepped up beside Heeroki. He summoned a stool and sat down. “I don’t understand. Why do you not simply seek the pleasure offered and be done?”

  I lost patience. “Because, Captain, the pleasure you speak of—in total ignorance, I might add—will kill me. Do you wish that?”

  He raised his small, chubby hands in protest. “Not so! Our friends assure us you will be safe.”

  “Your friends.” I wished I had a tentacle to consult. “The Rugherans.”

  “Of course. You are to be their long-sought Mystic One.”