I remember Lajoolie holding me in the dark. I also remember fighting her, lashing out as I screamed and screamed. Under other circumstances it might have been an Interesting Struggle, revealing which of us was stronger. The blackness, however, proved the deciding factor—with no food in years and no light for photosynthesis, I rapidly exhausted the last of my energy reserves.
My only warning was a wash of dizziness, strong enough to cut straight through my frenzy. I attempted to say, “I am sorry, Lajoolie,” but I do not think the words came out. Then my muscles went limp, and so did my mind.
Awakening
When I regained consciousness, the room was much brighter. The brightness came from dozens of glow-wands laid upon my body; someone had opened my jacket and stacked the wands on my chest, with more wands stuffed down my sleeves and others arranged along both sides of my legs. It was warm where they touched me—the pleasant heat of stones that have been baking under a summer sun.
I closed my eyes and basked. This light was not nearly so filling as the illumination in an Ancestral Tower—the towers were filled with many healthful energies far beyond the visible spectrum—but the glow-wands provided sufficient sustenance that I felt alive again…and I would get up very soon, after I had soaked in a bit more nutrition.
Someone said, “Did she move?”
The voice belonged to Sergeant Aarhus. When Festina and Captain Kapoor had headed in opposite directions, I could not remember whom Aarhus had followed. It dawned on me perhaps he had not gone with either party; perhaps he had remained unseen in the blackness, listening to Lajoolie and me speak. Was that not the behavior one expected of a zealous Security mook? Hiding in the dark. Keeping us under Covert Surveillance.
And what did he think we might do if left to our own devices? I asked myself. Did he fear we would damage a ship that was already broken? But perhaps Aarhus did not care so much about Lajoolie and me as he wished to guard baby Starbiter. The Zarett might provide our only way to call for help; therefore, the sergeant had posted himself to protect the child.
When I passed out, it must have been Aarhus who obtained these glow-wands. The sergeant would know where such items were stored; he would also be familiar enough with Royal Hemlock to find his way in the dark. I could imagine him staggering desperately through the blackness, mumbling to himself, “I must save Oar. I must save Oar. She is too beautiful to die.”
I found myself wondering dreamily if Aarhus had fallen in love with me. After all, I was far more attractive than opaque human women…and far more charming as well, for I was not a mousy little thing eternally fretting about conformance with the dictates of society. Perhaps the sergeant sensed in me a Tempestuous Beauty who could never be Tamed.
Which is quite enough to make some men fall in love.
For a while.
Until something in the male head goes click and suddenly you are Just Too Much Trouble.
A shudder passed through me and I clenched my face in chagrin. All my life I had been most adept at devising delightful fantasies, pleasant reveries of Love and Romance. Why could I not do that now? As soon as I began inventing a tale of Aarhus in love with me, why did something in my brain bring the fantasy to a crashing halt: Foolish Oar, real love is not so carefree or so sweet?
Was this what it meant to have a Tired Brain? To find oneself unable to spin rosy dreams? To be constantly burdened by It is not so easy and You must not ignore certain facts?
Most frightened, appalled, and desperate, I opened my eyes.
Quite Well Again
“Behold!” I said. I sat up and threw my arms wide, attempting to seem like a person not at all tormented by doubts. “Rejoice, for I have recovered! I am quite well again.”
My motion sent several glow-wands tumbling off my body. Sergeant Aarhus rushed over to put them in place again. Sometime since I had fallen unconscious, he had removed his ostentatious mook-armor. Now he was wearing an olive-colored coverall, emblazoned with insignia patches I did not bother to read. My attention was more focused on the fact that he had rolled up his sleeves, revealing nicely muscled arms all covered with yellowish hair.
Though men of my own species do not have hair on their arms, I am not so prejudiced as to disdain extra epidermal embellishment. In the course of my relations with humans, I have discovered that hairy arms can be excellently cushy.
Before I could remark upon the sergeant’s pleasant pelt, Lajoolie knelt beside me. “Are you sure you’re all right? Why don’t you lie back down?”
“I do not need to,” I told her. “And if I sit up, I can absorb light through my back as well as my front.”
To do that, I had to take off my jacket completely. As I did so, Aarhus averted his eyes; and for a moment, I felt a pang of concern, wondering if he was turning away because he did not like the way I looked when I was not covered by clothes. I told myself this could not possibly be—more likely, he suffered from overdelicate modesty, whereby he considered it rude to stare at my unclad flesh. Such a quality would soon vex me if he did not Get Over It…but in the short run, I decided to regard it as endearing.
“How are you all?” I asked in hearty bright tones. “Are you as well as I am? What has been happening since I began my perfectly normal nap?”
“Nothing much,” Aarhus replied, still looking at the wall rather than me. “You’ve only been out for an hour. No one’s come by with any news, and Nimbus is still locked like a rock around his kid.”
He jabbed a thumb at the chair where Nimbus had been sitting. The cloud man was still there, enclosing his daughter in the same quartzlike form as before. “Have you not even poked him,” I inquired, “to see if he reacts?”
“No,” Aarhus answered. “No poking unless the captain or admiral okays it.”
“Hmph!” I said, thinking the sergeant’s attitude most mulish. I was halfway tempted to poke the cloud man in sheer defiance…but such antics would be most childish, and perhaps would make Aarhus think less of me. The notion of having him love me still played in the back of my mind; and although the rest of my mind derided this notion as a foolish dream idyll—an Infantile Whim—I still found myself desirous of his good favor.
It is truly astonishing how a sane and clever one can be torn by ill-founded impulses.
“Now, Oar,” Lajoolie said, “you really should relax.” She laid her hand carefully on top of my head, precisely where ear-globes would be attached if I belonged to her species. I suppose that to Divians, this was a comforting gesture—or perhaps a means of determining one’s state of health, like feeling for a pulse. “Are you okay now?” she asked. “You went a bit…out of control.”
“I was not out of control,” I answered. “There is nothing wrong with my brain.”
“You’re perfectly clear-headed,” said Aarhus.
“Yes,” I said, then realized he had been making a joke about my personal transparency. “But I am clear-headed,” I insisted. “I am not dizzy, I am not Tired, I am not filled with irrational fantasies…”
The ship gave a sudden lurch. I looked at Lajoolie and Aarhus. “You felt that too, correct?”
How We Were Found
Before they could answer, the ship lurched again. This time, there was no possibility of mistake. Aarhus was thrown against the cabin wall, hitting hard with his shoulder. Lajoolie lost her balance and toppled onto me…but I was falling sideways myself, striking the hard cabin floor with a resounding crack. (That was, of course, the floor breaking—I am made of sterner stuff than whatever substance underlies the carpets of the human navy.)
I shoved Lajoolie off me just as the ship heaved in the opposite direction. She steadied herself by grabbing Nimbus’s chair; the chair was firmly secured to the floor and did not budge, even with Lajoolie’s great weight flung against it. I caught hold of the desk, which was also bolted down—in fact, all the furniture in the room was fastened in place, except for the desk’s chair, which slid on metal railings. This was a Wise Safety Precaution in case of Navigation
al Upset…for when Royal Hemlock shifted again, the chair slammed forward as far as its rails would permit, going
“What is happening?” I cried.
“Something’s grabbed us,” Aarhus answered. The ship lurched again. “Something damned clumsy.”
“Could it be the Shaddill?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Aarhus said. “My X-ray vision isn’t working today. If either of you can see through the hull, go ahead and have a peek.”
I recognized this as sarcasm. However, it reminded me that Festina said this ship had no windows—only exterior cameras which would not be working now. As a result, no one on board could know what had seized us…which made me feel better, since I was not the only one waiting in ignorance to see what transpired next.
“It’s likely the Shaddill,” Lajoolie said, full of fear.
“Or our navy,” Aarhus answered. “Captain Kapoor thought we got away from New Earth without being noticed…but if anyone spotted us, the Admiralty might have sent a ship chasing close on our tail.”
“It’s not the Shaddill or your navy. Lucky us.”
These words came from Nimbus. With a sudden whoosh, he expanded from hard-rock form to his usual manlike mist, holding the small Starbiter steady as the ship continued to rock. “To be accurate,” he continued, “our rescuers don’t look like Shaddill or the Outward Fleet on long-range scans.”
“How could you do a long-range scan?” Aarhus asked.
“I didn’t. My daughter did.”
Of course, we demanded to know how Nimbus had tapped into Starbiter’s powers; but the cloud man was reluctant to explain. He seemed worried we might think he had taken undue liberties, for he kept saying things like, “I’m completely trained to deal with any medical situation,” and, “It’s my most basic function, testing a female Zarett to make sure her systems are working”—all of which made him sound most guilty, as if he had done something improper to the child. When he finally revealed the truth, however, he had not done anything wicked to Starbiter…
He had merely tickled her.
Earlier, when we discussed using the little girl to send a distress signal, Nimbus had recognized the worth of our plan, even if he was not so keen about the suggestion to incinerate the baby until she cried, “Wahh!” Instead, he wrapped around her in a protective shell, then carefully eased microscopic bits of himself inside his daughter’s body. The process was similar to the way he moved through Mama Starbiter’s tissues, but on a very tiny scale. A few of Nimbus’s cells worked their way through the child, found the small knot of glands that permitted FTL broadcasting, and stimulated those glands.
The result was no more than an itch…like a scratch in your throat that makes you go, “Ahem!” over and over. Little Starbiter responded to the itch with a sort of irritable clucking—a cranky collection of trans-light noises which could never be mistaken for words but which were apt to attract attention from anyone close enough to hear.
And that is exactly what happened. Somebody had heard the signals and came to investigate. Nimbus watched the newcomers’ approach by linking some of his cells to young Starbiter’s long-range scan abilities: hiding inside the baby’s eyes to see what her scanners could see. This was the activity that had caused him shame. According to a whispered comment from Lajoolie, male Zaretts were highly averse to using the capabilities of females in any way—Nimbus and the rest of his sex attended to their women’s health needs, but scrupulously avoided any action which might be construed as Taking Over The Driver’s Seat.
What an excellent quality that is! They should preach this philosophy to males everywhere.
“It wasn’t wrong tickling the girl to send a Mayday,” the cloud man muttered. “Uclod clearly wanted that, and he’s her owner. So I was just carrying out the owner’s wishes, right? But actually linking myself to her, and seeing through her scanners…well, I had to keep watch, didn’t I? Uclod would want that too, even if he didn’t say so explicitly. He’d want to know if the Shaddill were coming, or the human navy…”
“So who is it?” Aarhus interrupted. He had allowed Nimbus to ramble in guilt-laden fashion about linking with his daughter, but the sergeant was obviously impatient for a Situational Report. “You only started sending the signal an hour ago,” Aarhus said. “Who was close enough to respond in so little time?”
“I couldn’t see exactly,” Nimbus replied. “Starbiter doesn’t have enough control to focus her scanners on anything in particular. And she doesn’t have much attention span either; I tried to keep her looking in one direction, but her gaze kept wandering all over the place.” He added defensively, “That’s perfectly normal for a child her age.”
“Sure, sure,” Aarhus said. “But what did you see?”
“Mostly a bunch of blurs. Nothing large enough to be the Shaddill or even a navy ship. I think it’s a swarm of smaller craft: single-person runabouts or family-sized yachts.”
“Hmm,” Lajoolie said. “That explains the jostling when they took Hemlock in tow. This ship is so big, we’d have to be grappled by a whole pack of smaller vessels. They must have had trouble coordinating who pulled which direction when.”
She looked to Aarhus, obviously wondering if he agreed. However, the sergeant had other things on his mind; he was staring upward with an unhappy expression on his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Trouble,” he said. “Unless I miss my guess, we’ve just been rescued by an outreach crusade.” He grimaced, then looked around at the rest of us. “Hope you haven’t got anything planned for the next ten years—we’ve just become Cashling slaves.”
Devising A Suitable Ransom
Lajoolie’s face blanched to an unattractive shade of yellow. “Are you sure?” she whispered.
“It’s a good guess,” Aarhus said. “Before Hemlock got zapped, we were headed for the planet Jalmut. That’s a Cashling world; most likely, the ships that answered our Mayday are Cashling too. But the Cashlings almost never travel in groups—they’re too egotistical. Get a bunch together in separate ships, and five minutes later, they fly off in different directions. The only time Cashling ships stay in a pack is when one of their prophets organizes a crusade.”
“And what is a crusade?” I asked. “A religious pilgrimage?”
“They get mad if you use the word ‘religious’—most Cashlings are devout atheists, and fly into tantrums at talk of deities or souls. But the truth is that Cashlings are religious as hell. Fanatic believers. They just switch beliefs every other day.”
“How can that be?”
“Doesn’t make sense to me either,” the sergeant replied. “But Cashlings believe in something called Pu Naram…usually translated into English as ‘Godly Greed.’ Don’t ask me to define it, because every time you blink, a new prophet shows up to put a different spin on what Godly Greed means. One week, it’s all about taking care of yourself and piss on anyone else; the next week, it’s switched to everybody working in harmony so you can all get rich together; then it’s about compassion and helping others, because tossing pennies to cripples really boosts your ego.” He rolled his eyes. “Cashlings always brag how they have a single unified culture, unlike humans and other species at our level of evolution…but the only unity I see is them flitting from one prophet to another, like flies trying to find the smelliest heap of manure.
“As for their outreach crusades,” he went on, gesturing vaguely at some point beyond the ship’s hull, “it’s traditional for a prophet to gather his or her followers and wander through space every few years. Mostly they visit other Cash-ling worlds, picking up new converts at every stop and losing just as many old ones. The turnover in people is substantial: after three stops, a crusade seldom has anyone it started with…not even the original prophet. Someone new decides he or she is a prophet and takes over the whole flotilla.”
Lajoolie favored me with a weak smile. “My husband once told me crusades have nothing to do with
belief. They come from a powerful instinct to homogenize the population: to break up communities that are getting too insular and to shuffle around the breeding pool. Uclod says the Cashlings have had mass migrations throughout their entire history; crusades are just the latest excuse.”
Aarhus nodded. “I’ve heard that too. But never say that to a Cashling either, unless you want to drive the bastard into a rage. Let’s not do that—we’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“Because they wish to take us as slaves?” I said. “We should inform them that nice religions do not do such things.”
“I told you, Pu Naram isn’t a religion; the Cashlings call it a ‘proven economic doctrine.’” Aarhus made a face. “And even though the working definition of Pu Naram changes ten times a year, it always retains one core principle: screwing aliens, especially ones who can’t fight back. Over the years, outreach crusades have come across a lot of aliens in distress—the Cashlings don’t have a navy like ours, so crusades are the primary source of search-and-rescue. By long-established tradition, a passing crusade won’t save your life until you swear ten years of indentured servitude.”
“But they must save our lives,” I said. “Are they not required to do so by the League of Peoples?”
Lajoolie shook her head. “Not unless they caused our predicament in the first place. They aren’t obliged to help us, and if they do, they can charge whatever price they want.”
“Hmph!” I said. “I do not think much of that policy.”
“But the Cashlings love it,” Aarhus answered. “They consider it a wonderful omen when a crusade scoops up slaves—it boosts the prophet’s prestige. Of course, if we’re really lucky, this particular prophet might be liberal enough to take a ransom instead: letting us hand over a bucket of cash instead of ten years’ hard labor.”
He did not sound cheered by that prospect, but I thought it allowed us an excellent means of emancipation. “Then we shall hand over Royal Hemlock,” I said. “It is quite large and splendid, even if it is broken. Parts of it even have carpet. The ship must be worth enough to pay all our ransoms.”
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