by J. D. Lakey
“Show me these demons,” Oud suggested.
Cheobawn closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct the vision in her head; the starry night above the frozen plain, the shadow across the stars.
She opened her eyes and leapt off the dome, spreading her arms wide to catch the wind. She was only slightly surprised to find she did not have arms anymore, but great leathery wings. She was a sky hunter. Cheobawn cupped the wind between her long fingers and beat her way north. The land streamed underneath her, flowing impossibly fast. She looked to her side to see another sky hunter with eyes of beaten gold flying in her slipstream.
“What is this form?” the sky hunter asked.
“Teeth with wings,” Cheobawn said with a laugh that showed every sharp fang.
“There are other ways to travel inside the stone matrix,” Oud pointed out.
“As fun as this?” Cheobawn asked. She beat her wings hard, rising in the air until the mountains underneath them were mere anthills.
“No, perhaps not,” Oud said. “You are very clever, but then, I have already told you this. Where are we going?”
“There,” Cheobawn said, pointing with her snout. A darkness hung at the top of the world, untouched by the winter sun. The currents from space writhed upon the magnetic storm at the pole like snakes of fire and light.
In the next moment the lights surrounded her. She squawked in surprise and dove towards the ground only to find she was already there. Cheobawn began to understand the rules inside the stone matrix. Seeing was the same as going. She would have to remember that next time. She lifted her wings to slow herself down as she dropped. Just above the ground she let go of the air and stretched her toes towards the ice, landing lightly. The sky hunter body was heavy and awkward on the ground. She disliked the feel. With a shake of her head, she grew antlers and broad two-toed feet on all four limbs that splayed flat across the snow like snowshoes.
“What are we now?” asked Oud, who had a thick white ruff, red antlers, and two knife shaped ivory tusks protruding downward to well below her chin.
“Hmm, I think we are snow deer,” Cheobawn said, entranced by the feel and power of the body she now wore.
“Why are we here?”
“Look up,” Cheobawn said. “It is still here.”
Cheobawn laid her antlers alongside her neck and lifted her chin to the sky. Oud followed her example. The shadow was different. Was this a memory or were they back upon the frozen plain in real time? She studied the place in the sky where the stars had ceased to shine. It was not a shadow at all, she decided but a hole torn into the fabric of the world. The darkness in the center of the hole was absolute and impenetrable.
“Ah,” Oud said.
“Do you recognize it then?” Cheobawn asked curiously, glancing over at her companion.
“I believe I do,” Oud said, wonder in her voice. “It is an event horizon.”
“Words! Words. What does that mean,” Cheobawn said, stamping her feet in frustration.
“Think of it as a doorway to somewhere else,” Oud said.
“Did you call me out of my rest to play dress-up with this child?” Bohea asked acidly.
Cheobawn spun around at the sound of his voice. He stood upon the frozen plain in his sparkly metal suit, glaring at the both of them. Oud shivered, shaking the form of the snow deer away to regain her violet skinned appearance.
“All apologies, Colonel,” Oud said with a bow. “I deemed your presence prudent and necessary.”
“Leave her alone,” Cheobawn said hotly. “If you want to be mad, be mad at me. I asked to see you.”
“Ah, Lady, how you have changed,” Bohea said dryly. “I hardly recognized you?”
Was he making fun of her? Cheobawn tried to glare at him but her snow deer face did not seem to know how to do such a thing. She stamped her hooves and shook her antlers instead.
“Very impressive. Am I supposed to be frightened?” Bohea asked, sounding bored.
“I would not test the limits of her abilities in this realm, Colonel,” Oud warned softly. “Her kind play with bloodstones like your kind play with dollies and toy tea sets.”
Bohea considered this for a moment and then turned back to Cheobawn, bowing slightly, his arms spread in surrender.
“You would not hurt me, would you Little Mother?” Bohea asked. “You know me.”
The last thing she wanted to do was exchange words with Bohea. He was a master of words, twisting every utterance to his advantage and turning her brain into soft jelly.
“A smoke leopard almost ate Sigrid. Star is dead. This is all your fault,” Cheobawn said angrily as she shook away her antlers and brushed her blond curls out of her eyes. She pointed at the sky. “Make it stop.”
Bohea let his eyes follow her finger. He grew quite still and his face lost its perpetual sneer.
“A natural event, do you think?” Bohea asked then thought of something else. “Is this real time?”
“I would not hazard a guess at either question,” Oud said with a solemn shake of her head.
A bubble of light formed in the heart of the darkest part of the hole. It shot towards the earth until it touched the magnetic storm whereupon it whipped away, caught like a leaf in a rushing stream. Cheobawn followed it with her eyes as it tumbled free far to the south above the mountains of the Waste.
Bohea said some very harsh words, most of which she did not understand.
“How long has this been going on?” he snapped. “Why has no one detected this before now? Scramble the short range fighters. Where in all the cursed universe is Lieutenant Lystand! I want his sensor array linked to this station, now! Move!”
Cheobawn was fairly certain he was not yelling at either her or Oud. Bohea finally looked down, catching Oud with a cold look.
“How long?” Bohea asked, “We have flown over this spot a thousand times. Tell me this is a recent event,”
“Unfortunately I cannot tell you any such thing,” Oud said, sadness conveyed in every motion of her eloquent body. “According the child, it has been active for almost half a planetary year.”
Bohea’s curse was succinct and fervent. “How did we miss this thing?” he asked, looking up at it again. “You are Scerron. Nothing happens in space that you do not know about. Why has this gone unnoticed?”
“Ah, but this is not like anything we have encountered before. It is hard to guard against the unexpected. As for your patrols, I would venture to guess that the event is only visible from the planet surface and since flying below the atmospheric envelope is prohibited by treaty, we might never have spotted it had we not been warned.”
Another blue ball of light fell to earth.
“Conjecture as to the nature of those objects?” Bohea asked Oud.
“They are not ships. You would have detected the signature telltales of Spider technology the minute it dropped into real time. They seem to be linked to the change in the planetary weather,” Oud said. “You yourself have remarked in my hearing that one could hide all the moons of Vass inside these storms. Perhaps we have caught it in time.”
Another ball dropped and whipped away. Cheobawn stared after it as it fell to earth beyond the horizon. Bear Under the Mountain nagged for attention somewhere in the back of her mind. Look with more than eyes, he seemed to say.
“So, you think it might be a variation of a terraforming device?” Bohea asked.
“Perhaps the Spiders are testing a new weapon. One that can kill all the humans on a planet but leave the surface intact. All one would need to do is reverse the process to make it habitable again allowing them to establish their own colonies.”
“It is too cold,” Cheobawn she said softly, trying hard to understand the things in the ambient. “It is killing them.”
Her words drew Bohea’s eyes, his face still, his eyes as intent as any predator’s.
“What did she say?” Bohea asked.
“The cold is killing who, clever child?” Oud asked, touching a finger to Ch
eobawn’s cheek to catch her attention.
“The babies,” Cheobawn said, “inside the eggs. It is quite sad, really. We need to tell them to stop because their babies are dying. What is the point of sending seeds if the seeds cannot germinate and grow?”
Bohea and Oud became oddly quiet. She looked around. They were both staring down at her. Bohea looked ill.
“What do we know about Spider reproduction and physiology?” he asked the room. Both he and Oud listened to something Cheobawn could not hear. Bohea nodded. “Not enough, apparently. Cold kills the eggs but what happens when the snow melts? Will they thaw out and become viable?”
Bohea listened for a long time, his face becoming harder and more forbidding.
“I will be damned if am going to let the Spiders establish a base of operations on this side of Consortium space,” Bohea said through clenched jaws. “Not while I am in command, do I make myself clear? We need to hunt every one of these eggs out and destroy them, starting now. If that means sending every CPC recruit available downworld to dig them out by hand, so be it!” He was shouting by the time he was finished.
“You cannot,” Oud cried in alarm, her flesh gone totally dark. “The treaty forbids it.”
Cheobawn watched as another ball of light fell into the magnetic storm over her head, flared iridescent, and then whirling away. Mora was not going to like it if thousands of Spacers started tramping around in her forests nor would she appreciate a plague of spider babies. Bear Under the Mountain really wanted her to pay attention to something.
Bohea cursed the treaty and cursed Oud and cursed the Spiders and all their children as his image began to flicker and fade. Bear wanted him to stay and listen. Cheobawn reached out a hand and caught at his sparkly armored arm as it disappeared, trying to hold him in this place.
The icy plain under the sky full of stars disappeared.
She stood in a metal room dominated by banks of machinery being attended by dozens of people dressed in black, some with gold bits on their shoulders and collars. Half a dozen bowl shaped, padded couches filled the center of the room. Bohea sat in the one in front of her. He was pulling a cap full of wires from his head and loosening the collar of a suit of similar makeup when he looked up and saw her. A look of consternation flashed across his face.
“Am I still connected to the neural network?” he asked a young Father who sat nearby in front of a panel full of display screens.
“Uh, no, sir,” the boy said, staring at her. Cheobawn saw Oud across the room, a golden sphere imbedded in a bank of machinery under her hands. The Scerron’s presence in this strange new place disconcerted her. She looked back to where Oud should have been standing to make sure she was not losing her mind. Oud had not moved. The Scerron was still at her side. There was an uneasy look of surprise on her violet face.
“Mother, why are there two of you?” Cheobawn asked her, deeply puzzled.
“That is my sister,” Oud said, her voice trembling. “How is it that you and I are here, Lady?”
Cheobawn put her hand out. It passed through Bohea’s arm and the side of the couch as well. Bohea jerked his arm away. She laughed. “I am not here, but one of Old Father Bhotta’s stone is, isn’t it. Not the one in your temple. The one that Colonel Bohea kept. Am I right?”
The Scerron who was not Oud nodded as she very slowly took her hands away from the sphere she was touching. Nothing changed. The Scerron flushed darkly.
Cheobawn could feel all three stones; the one in her lap down on the planet, the one in Oud’s hands somewhere on the other side of the galaxy and the one in this room. Three stones, naturally bonded in the making but now lying in the hands of three powerful adepts, all of whom had been concentrating on a single unified moment still talked to each other. That was all it took. That one moment. Now a triangle of power burned in the back of her brain, energy arcing through all three stones in an endless loop using the psi connections between the sister Scerrons and herself. If she thought about it hard enough she could almost reach out and touch Oud’s stone, even though it was infinitely far away. She resisted that urge, focusing on Bohea instead.
“Somebody had better start explaining this,” Bohea growled as he climbed out of the couch. “Why do we all see her without any of us touching an array?”
“I believe she has already told you, Colonel,” Oud said faintly. “What you see is not real. She is in your head and because I am in her head, I am here too.”
“In my head? What does that mean? I am not imagining this,” he growled.
“No, indeed you are not,” Oud said. “She is. The bloodstone in this room is her receiver and her transmitter. Because you are all in close proximity to it, she has been able to co-opt your own brains into believing she is here. Does that sound correct, Lady?”
“As you said, distance has no meaning,” Cheobawn said with a shrug. “It is not the stones but the people handling them.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” Oud sighed, amazement on her face. “A circle of three.”
“Gah! I don’t care how it is done,” Bohea shouted. “Get her out of my head.”
“I think that if you did not want to talk to me, you could keep me out quite easily,” Cheobawn said, a smile playing on her lips as she thought of Sam and his new Ear. It was so odd to see Bohea unnerved. “Me, I like to do math in my head. It seems to help shut out the noise of other minds. But do not do so until we have talked, I beg you.”
“I have an invasion to stop, Little Mother,” Bohea seethed in fury. “Need I remind you that the war with the Spiders had fallen into an uneasy truce before I listened to you; before we sent a bloodstone into Spider controlled space. What is it that you think I want to hear?”
“She is just a child,” Oud protested. “You cannot blame a two thousand year war …“
“Ah, ever the disclaimer from the Scerrons,” Bohea snapped in irritation. “Ever the messengers of doom. I weary of your convoluted politics, Your Holiness. I am a soldier, first and foremost and I must do my job.”
It occurred to Cheobawn, in that moment, that Bohea was not much different than her Da; that he was a warrior who owed his allegiance to a First Mother somewhere and that his life was bound up in rules and traditions and the wishes of others. Bear Under the Mountain rumbled softly somewhere under her feet. Things stood in balance, it told her, like the stones in a scree and she was the mite and the flea and the pica busy burrowing under the one stone that might upset the balance in a direction that would cause the least damage.
Cheobawn wished for silence and the compartment on the battle cruiser faded. She found herself back in the white room, its walls once again lost in the mist of infinite distance. Colonel Bohea stood before her, dressed in his black uniform, the bits of gold on his collar gleaming every bit as brightly as Oud’s eyes. He lifted his head and looked around.
“What is this? More mind tricks?” he asked scowling. “I have no time for this.”
“No, nor do I,” Cheobawn agreed. “The Elders hunt for me even as we speak and I do not have time to dally words with you. Give me your hand. I have a gift.”
“Forgive me if I am leery of your gifts, Little Mother,” Bohea snapped.
“Do not be such a baby,” she snorted impatiently. “It will not hurt. Hold out your hand.”
The Colonel did as she asked, albeit reluctantly. She put the tip of one finger in the center of his palm.
“Look up,” she said softly. “What do you see?”
A blue ball of light fell out of the darkness and flared, brilliant blues and greens dancing over its surface before it tumbled away. It was still glowing when it fell to earth and disappeared over the edge of the world.”
“The eggs?” he asked. “So?”
She poked him harder with the tip of her finger.
“They are magnetic. It is the planetary magnetic fields that is launching them so far to the south. Also, they glow in the dark. It is called bio luminescence,” she said.
“I know what it
is called,” Bohea said, staring up at the sky. She replayed the memory again.
“What else do you see?” she prompted.
“The flare in the magnetic fields? It is not an optical illusion caused by the aurora?” he wondered out loud.
“In the deep of night, it should not be hard to find them, given the right equipment, don’t you think?” she suggested.
Bohea looked down at her, suspicion in his eyes.
“This was your invitation. You wanted the Spiders to come. Now you want me to kill them. Why the sudden change of heart?” he asked.
“Spider kind has always been greedy. Old Father Bhotta remembered that. That is why his kind went down to the shores to eat the arthropod young every spring. Too many is just as bad as too few.” she explained. “Bear Under the Mountain wants you to find them. Most of them, anyway. If a few escape your hunt, the bhottas will find the rest when they wake in the spring. It has been a very long time since the bhottas had such a feast.”
“Then we are back to where we started,” Bohea said, shaking her confusing words out of his head. “No, we are worse off. The Spiders will be angry at your treachery and the tensions between our species will ramp up just a little bit higher.”
“Oh, no,” Cheobawn said with utter confidence, “Star Woman and Bear Under the Mountain will hide a few eggs from the eyes of all the hunters just as they hid the dark door from Spacer eyes. Neither you nor the bhottas have enough magic to stop it. A few will eventually make it to the warm salty seas. The Spiders will have to be content with that.”
“I do not, cannot, believe in magic,” Bohea said with utter finality.
“That’s alright,” Cheobawn said with a laugh. “I do.”
Bohea did not like losing a war of words. He closed his eyes and pushed, disappearing from her mind. Cheobawn found herself back in Mora’s office. Lifting the sphere out of her lap, she dropped it back into its place inside its box. It was only as she rose to her feet, the box in her hands, that she realized she was not alone in the room.
Chapter Eleven
Cheobawn stared at her Truemother. Mora sat in her chair behind her desk, her face a perfect mask, the wall filled with golden spheres behind her like a grotesquely huge diadem above her head. Her icy blue eyes betrayed nothing of what she was thinking. Cheobawn remembered to breath; then she remembered she was holding a dampening box and her hands were growing numb. Well, there was no lie that would get her out of this one. She turned and climbed the step stool, standing on her toes to slide the box back in place next to the other dampened stones. Hopping down, she stowed the stool and shook the feeling back into her hands. Mora was still staring at her when she turned back towards the desk.