The Actor didn’t help either, spouting disorienting glitter and noise—and, yes, those were the local version of gumdrops—over participants.
All at once, they burst into the open space of the next intersection. On either side, participants hesitated, unsure of their role, then began to congratulate one another and spread to the sides—
Too soon. Evan didn’t need the urgent pull on both ears and, “Look out!” to convince him to start running.
Two new Actors, adoring crowds at their basal pods, were heading straight for them.
* * *
For the festival’s plot to play out on the streets of Kateen, the participants, be they large and metal, or flesh and glitter, needed to reach their marks at the right time. Arguably, the Urgians could have put their mechanicals in place from the start, but how then to invoke this lovely, multispecies’ mass euphoria that resulted from knowing you were an essential part of it all?
With the potential to be stomped to goo on cobblestones. Or lose an arm.
Dramatic license, I decided gleefully, hanging on to Evan’s head as he ran and doing my best not to poke him in the eye. I’d tried wrapping my arms around his neck, but he’d started to choke.
Paul would not be impressed. On the bright side, I thought contentedly, I was participating.
Perhaps being too much Bess and not enough Esen.
I’d worry about that later.
* * *
For spectators on rooftops, the meeting of the three Actors, though only part of the opening of the festival, must have been magnificent. Arms strained mightily, levers moved, and the mechanicals interacted with one another, spewing vapors and glitter, surrounded by cheering crowds—members of which did their best to climb the legs and swing by their overts in an excess of joy.
Evan Gooseberry was too busy trying not to be crushed by excesses of any type, joyful or otherwise, to pay attention. The moving masses had come together like crashing waves, spilling as many backward as made their way closer to the Actors, not that all didn’t keep trying. With Bess on his shoulders, her weight growing, keeping his balance was hard work, but he didn’t dare put her down. All around them, Urgians squirmed over one another and their offworld guests, slapping arms, heaving their glitter-coated bodies. It was all good fun.
Unless a child fell and was smothered beneath.
He wouldn’t let that happen.
He recognized where they were. The buildings fronting this intersection—the stage for tonight’s daring “Cloud Viper Ballet,” an Urgian festival staple he’d marked to avoid at all costs—contained restaurants and little shops at street level. Refuge, if any were still open. Refusing to doubt, Evan aimed for the nearest and began to push through in earnest, hoping any Urgian he stepped on would be too entranced by the Actors to care.
It was—exhilarating. He couldn’t remember his heart ever pounding this hard, this long, when he hadn’t been trapped in his own FEAR.
Why he wasn’t afraid now was entirely due to the small person clinging to his head.
* * *
More than anything, I longed to wiggle my fingers in the air, solid arms being unable to create proper wave structure, while shouting rhymes at the top of this form’s lungs.
With Evan laboring beneath me while everyone around us was having such a grand time, I resisted.
Still, I’d a superb view of the dramatic interaction taking place nearby. We were so close, in fact, that the next grapple and spout between the Actors soaked me in what tasted like diluted tuiit juice and, from the resulting raucous poetry, was meant to represent an Urgian bodily fluid. They’d seven for procreation.
Love was in the air.
Evan, shielded by me and everyone around us, remained dry. Determined, too, in his efforts to get us closer to a building. I’d have argued with him, it being easier to be crushed against a solid surface for one thing, and much harder to be gaily swept along into the next part of the plot for another—
But this sign, I could read. Sweet Decadence: Offworld Treats A Specialty
Meaning . . . Fudge!?
Had I been in a responsible frame of mind, I’d have spared some thought to what Paul and Rudy were doing at that moment, and if they’d be worried, but no.
FUDGE!
* * *
They were pushed through the door without Bess being decapitated only because Evan stumbled over the unseen doorsill and sent her flying. He grabbed in vain as her weight left his shoulders, fearing the worst. “Bess!”
“I’m here!” With a laugh. He wormed his way into the shop to find the child encircled in the arms of an Urgian, smiling and her cheeks flushed.
The sweet shop consisted of an open area, no longer open, encompassed by tall clear cases filled with trays of whatever the owner had been able to acquire and dared display together—it being a given that no two species had the same preference at the same time, leading to an interspecies’ dominance struggle of delicious treats playing out in full view.
Treats endangered by the press of those inside, who couldn’t have freed an overt to indicate a purchase. Unable to make sales to what had to be their largest ever crowd, the owner and her family were removing trays as quickly as possible in anticipation of the first crack in a case and subsequent free-for-all.
The Urgians, liking to put pairs of things together, cooperated in a squirm and squeeze to reunite Evan and Bess.
While possibly producing a new generation in the corner. Evan resolutely turned his attention to the child. “Are you all right?” He didn’t have to shout; the walls and ceiling, the bodies around them, had a blissful muting effect. They might have been in a bubble.
Her hand found his and she looked up, her expression rueful. “I’d hoped for some fudge.”
He hadn’t expected to laugh. It felt strange, so he stopped at once. “Don’t worry. We’ll go to the embassy. Terry keeps biscuits in his workstation.”
“The Human Embassy.”
“Of course.” Evan was surprised. Where else? “That’s where I work, Bess. Did work—till now.” He hadn’t meant to add the words, or have them sound sad, or to be unable to say anything more.
She lowered her voice, not that those around them were paying attention. “Because Diales—the Hurn—stole something from your bag. What was it?”
Because it couldn’t matter, now, Evan told her.
* * *
Stuck in a sweet shop, without fudge, enclosed in a warm fleshy press of rhyming Urgians, also without fudge, wasn’t where I’d imagined I’d spend the festival, though we had managed to reach the relative comfort of a display case. Without fudge.
Too much time as a Lishcyn had skewed my priorities. What I’d learned from Evan was important. And disturbing, I thought.
Invite the Popeakan Ambassador—the ranking individual of the species on this world—to an Urgian Two of Two? Evan wasn’t wrong to worry about the result; he just didn’t appreciate what it could be. A physical interaction fraught with emotion was exactly what Popeakans required before they could offer “attachment”—what some might call a partnership, others forced adoption, and Ersh dismissed as pointless.
Risky, yes, but not pointless. Without forging that intimate connection, Popeakans were incapable of further negotiation. Their own nature trapped them within their tiny portion of space.
Success, on the other toetip, would open the doors to interspecies’ treaties and trade. If senior staff at the Human Embassy were aware of the biological nature of Popeakan diplomacy and willing to be involved, others would be, too. Making tomorrow’s Two of Two a competition for the Popeakans, winning species take all.
Hurns would have an interest, but if Diales thought stealing the information in our collection would put his kind ahead, he’d missed the entire point of what Paul and I were creating. Had the Library been open, I thought almost wistfully, Diales si
mply could have asked his question. I’d have known to slip in my special knowledge of the Popeakans.
As for intercepting Evan’s invitation—why would the Hurn bother? I’d too many questions.
Fortunately, I’d someone with potential answers. “Evan, how could anyone outside the embassy know you were carrying the invitation?” In a plaid lunch bag, no less. “And why were you?”
“Our coms were compromised,” he replied defensively. “Satchels were the new protocol.”
Not really, I knew, also not important at the moment. What was? Breaching com security was on Diales’ list of marketable skills, but he’d need to be present to accomplish it.
Explaining why he’d told Paul to meet on Kateen—
“That’s not all,” Evan went on, and I wished for ears to prick with interest. “Data was scrubbed from our systems. The techs were working on what, other than recent searches, but when I checked how the—they’d provide a receipt for the invitation, there was nothing left about the—on the—” His face wrinkled with effort and the word came out in a strangled whisper. “Popeakans.”
Not a hard word to say. I tilted my head, eyes wide; a move I’d learned Rudy couldn’t resist. It made Paul suspicious, but he knew the real me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve some—trouble—with the name, that’s all.” Evan sighed like something broken. “I’m working on it. Why take away our information about them? It doesn’t make sense.”
Unless, I thought grimly, Diales had scouted the competition, decided Humans were the greatest threat, and wanted to reduce their chances. Information was power—
—only if you had all the facts. I knew what was in no database, ours or the embassy’s. The last time the Popeakans had shown up on another species’ world to offer attachment—and succeeded—I hadn’t been born and the Commonwealth consisted of less than fifty Human systems hungry for contact with anyone different.
Since then, the Popeakans had tried five times in Ersh-memory, failing in each to dire consequence. The tragedy was those failures, and their cost, could have been prevented.
If what I now feared were true, the Popeakans, including the one in the pink raincoat, were on Urgia Prime to try again. Why?
What mattered was this time I was here, and I wasn’t Ersh to leave others to the whims of ignorance. I was, perhaps, a little too sure of myself, but nothing ventured, no one saved—
“We need to find out why,” I declared, likely confusing Evan. Lacking a com Diales couldn’t intercept, we’d one option. “We have to find my friends.”
Who’d suspected Diales from the start. Paul wouldn’t have shared that nastiness with me, especially after I’d squealed with anticipation at the top of my Lishcyn lungs. At least I could tell him why Diales had left his semi-fortress in the Dump to risk exposure here, during the festival.
As well as my near-certainty the Urgians were in on it. Their world. Their guests. In the old tradition, In Pursuit of the Most Pure, We Must First Ourselves Be Found might be more than a street party with plot. What if this festival was a contest between the Urgians, Humans, and maybe every species represented here, all after the Popeakans?
With the Hurns willing to cheat to take home the prize.
“We’ve no time to waste,” I told my unwitting ally.
Evan gave me a curious look. “You aren’t like other children, are you, Bess?”
“I’m working on it,” I echoed his words.
He smiled until he realized I was serious. “Do you know where your friends are? If not, we should still go to the—” the words ended in a tight gasp.
A pink-raincoated Popeakan appeared in the doorway, delicately stepping from Urgian to Urgian on her way to, yes, us.
* * *
They were trapped.
IT WAS COMING! and he was trapped, unable to move, unable to breathe.
Fingers, reassuring soft and warm, tightened around his. “Don’t move,” Bess urged quietly. “Do you see? How afraid ril is?”
Not moving was easy. To look directly at the Pink Popeakan was the hardest thing Evan could remember doing.
No, it was keeping his gaze on ril, to do what Bess asked of him. See.
BLACK JOINTED LEGS—
Trembling with every step . . .
SKITTERING—
Steps back, then forth, raincoat squeaking, toetips leaving tiny depressions on the Urgians, back, then forth, as if ril couldn’t decide, as if ril were . . .
AFRAID. Gorge rose in his throat and—
Bess kicked his shin. Startled, Evan swallowed and refocused. “New plan,” she told him. “We take ril to the Popeakan Embassy.”
“What did you say . . .” If she repeated the improbable words, he didn’t hear. His surroundings took on a dreamlike quality. Oh, he knew the signs. Had been here before. He couldn’t run, so his mind, overwhelmed, was disassociating from reality. Elements pulled away; others closed in. He saw, the Pink Popeakan having paused close enough to touch, the fanlike bristles of black hair at each JOINT and how each BLACK LEG bore delicate overlapping little scales, glistening, trembling—
With a suddenness that shocked him back to himself, the creature collapsed into a motionless heap of pink raincoat. The Urgians beneath reached up with wary overts.
“Evan!” Another kick. “Hurry! We have to help.” To his horror, Bess took hold of the nearest limp black leg. “What are you waiting for?”
To habituate, he wanted to say. A year or so might do it.
Instead, numb to his core, Evan Gooseberry leaned forward and gathered up the pink raincoat and its wearer, part of him astonished how light ril was.
The rest promising to shut down as soon as it was convenient to do so.
* * *
Stuck in a fudgeless sweet shop, packed like prawlies in a can with, to be fair, very polite Urgians plus a family of Octarians valiantly trying for the door so their youngest could see the “dragons,” should have been sufficient for my day, but no.
Now I understood why Evan had flinched from the arms of Urgians, struggled to say “Popeakan,” and stood rigid—while sweating profusely enough for three Hurns. It was because he held ril in his arms.
A Popeakan who’d struggled to approach us, only to faint when close? The species wasn’t accustomed to aliens, but I’d a sinking feeling ril was as terrified of Humans as Evan was of ril’s kind.
And here I was: Human, too. Why had I thought being Bess a good plan?
You worked with what you had. Rather than kick poor Evan again, I took hold of his satchel and tugged gently. “This way.” Presented with an emergency, the Urgians cooperatively slithered atop one another, and up the cases, to make a narrow, glitter-walled corridor for us to the door. One likely to slide apart at any second, so I tugged harder.
Evan started to come with me.
Suddenly, he was pulled violently back. As his feet flew up, somehow he kept hold of the unconscious Popeakan. For lack of a better idea, I kept hold of the satchel and found myself being dragged along, too, unable to see what was happening. By the Urgians’ chittering applause, either we were assisted by inappropriately programmed mechanicals—
Or they’d mistaken an ambush for more theater. A fundamental flaw with the spectator mindset, I reminded myself as I bounced along the floor, holding form with an effort.
Then I caught sight of who, not what, was dragging us into the rear of the sweet shop: a familiar Hurn and two more of his kind.
Lips smacked as bags went over our heads.
* * *
They were locked in a storeroom. While Evan Gooseberry had never been locked in a storeroom, nor—for that matter—been kidnapped or robbed, nor—in full humiliating disclosure—committed a crime himself before today, he had not the slightest doubt. He knew storerooms. There were the usual shelves crammed with stuff and a lack of other furniture, ex
cept that on this side of the closed door?
The handle had been broken off.
He ran his fingers around the door frame, not that he’d any hope of finding a secret catch, but he’d read an adventure with one—and it meant he didn’t have to look around to where Bess sat beside the still-unconscious Pink Popeakan, one black JOINTED leg cradled in her little hand. It was wrong. WRONG . . . and TRAPPED . . . he leaned his forehead against the door and took long shuddering breaths.
This was his fault. After the leader of the Hurns sucked the sweat from his neck, to the lip-smacking envy of the others, the revolting creature had retrieved a tiny device from the pocket of Evan’s shirt and waved it in triumph. Its Human, the thief, had planted it in case Evan proved useful again.
And he had. They’d lost the Popeakan, until ril came to him.
Evan pressed his hand over his empty pocket. They’d taken his com link. The holocube, too, with its comforting access to family.
He’d never felt so alone in his life.
“Evan. Evan.”
His breathing caught, then settled. Not alone—he’d responsibilities—ones he’d . . . failed. Evan sagged again. “I’m sorry, Bess. I’m worse than useless.”
“Evan—”
“I was supposed to save you.” He swallowed, then added bravely. “Save you both.”
“Why?”
He’d say his duty, but he didn’t deserve to belong to the embassy staff. Not after this. “Because I’m older—”
Was that a chuckle, quickly muffled?
Evan glanced around and there was Bess, one hand over her mouth, her eyes bright with mischief. Seeing his face, she dropped her hand and grew serious. “We have to save ril,” she corrected. “For that, we need ril awake— Steady!”
The Only Thing to Fear Page 7