by Timothy Zahn
Damn. She’d meant to go back and swap out the keylocks again. Only somehow she’d never gotten around to it.
“Nicole?” Carp asked.
Belatedly, Nicole realized she was standing in the middle of the hallway, her mouth was hanging open, and Carp and the others were staring at her. “What?” she managed.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Fine. You get it all?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Carp said, still staring. “You need to go to the medical center?”
Nicole frowned. Did she look that sick? She opened her mouth to tell him she was fine—
And then, almost too late, she caught the golden opportunity she’d just been handed. She needed to get to the arena, and she didn’t want any of the group to know she was going there … “Yes, maybe I should,” she said. “But I can help get the gear to the work site first.”
“That’s okay—we can handle it,” Carp said. There was something in his eyes, an odd intensity that worried her. “You just go get yourself checked out.”
“You want me to go with her?” Jeff volunteered.
“No, I’m all right,” Nicole said hastily. “I’ll be back soon.”
She backtracked a couple of hallways until she reached a cross-corridor that would take her safely out of their sight. Once there, she followed it all the way to the portside hull, then turned into the portside corridor and headed toward the front of the ship.
She took the last part of the trip carefully, peering around every corner, hoping she wouldn’t run into any of her crew. But all the cross-corridors were empty, with no humans, Wisps, or wandering centaurs. She reached the arena door with a sigh of relief and punched in the reset code.
Nothing happened.
She frowned and punched in the code again. Still nothing. She tried a third time, then dropped to one knee and peered in at the mechanism.
The damaged keylock hadn’t looked all that different from a good one, which was how Bungie had managed to do the scrap bucket switch in the first place. But there had been a couple of minor but distinct differences.
Those differences were no longer there. Sometime in the past twelve hours, someone had come here and swapped out the trick keylock with a new, undamaged one.
That job should have come through her team, which would at least have given her advance warning. Clearly, someone had beaten them to it.
And Nicole no longer had any way to open it.
She got back to her feet, thoroughly confused. Why in the world would she have been told to go to the arena if she couldn’t get in? Didn’t the Fyrantha realize that the keylock had been changed?
Of course it knew. That was the whole point of these messages that she and the other Sibyls were sent. The ship was always running diagnostics to see what needed to be fixed.
Unless her summons hadn’t been about going into the arena, but merely coming to the arena door. Where she was out of sight of everyone who knew her …
She spun around, fully expecting to see Fievj in his bright centaur armor striding toward her, maybe with a weapon in his hand this time. But again, there was no one in sight. Not even a Wisp.
Could the Wisps be waiting for her down the dead-end hallway? Had she been brought here to learn the secret of how they appeared and disappeared from there?
And if it did have something to do with the teleport apparatus, like Sam thought, did that mean the Fyrantha had decided it was time to send her and the others back to Earth?
She stared at the arena door, running that thought through her mind, trying to decide how it made her feel. She felt safer here than she ever had in Philadelphia, and had thought she was reasonably happy. But that was before Jeff’s grim analysis of their situation. Had her earlier contentment been solely the result of some rationalization thing that her mind had created in order to keep her from being miserable?
She didn’t know. But for the moment it wasn’t important. Bungie and Sam certainly wanted to go home, and if the ship was ready to let her in on the secret, she needed to listen. She could always send the others back and then decide whether or not she really and truly wanted to join them.
Only how could she learn anything if there wasn’t anyone here to show her?
And then, she finally got it.
“Damn,” she muttered at her own stupidity. Pulling out the inhaler, she gave herself a whiff.
Enter the arena with the code six-seven-two-nine-four-three-eight.
She frowned. So it wasn’t the hallway. The ship did indeed want her to go into the arena. Had she been right the first time about Bungie being in there?
Only one way to find out. Dropping the inhaler back into her vest pocket, she punched in the code.
The door popped open. Taking one last look around the still-deserted hallway behind her, she pulled the heavy metal panel back a couple of feet and slipped inside.
The place looked about the same as it had last night, except that the sky was much brighter, more like the daytime lighting that had been going on her first trip inside. The trees, bushes, and waving grass seemed just as inviting as always, and there were no indications that the place was even inhabited, let alone inhabited by people with bows, halberds, and greenfire guns.
But someone was clearly still here. The dead body was no longer propped up under the tree.
Nicole took a deep breath. At least the body hadn’t been removed and replaced by a dead Bungie. “Hello?” she called tentatively. “Bungie?”
There was no answer. She hesitated, then pulled out her screwdriver and wedged it between the door and jamb. There was a keylock on the inside of the door, too, and the code the Fyrantha had given her would probably work just as well from this direction. But then again, it might not, and she had no interest in getting trapped in here.
Taking a deep breath, she moved warily into the chamber. “Bungie?” she called again.
Still no answer. Ahead and to her left were the low forested hills where the weasels with the greenfire guns had come from on her first visit. It was also the general area from which one of last night’s bowmen had taken potshots at Bungie. Ahead and to her right, separated from the wooded hills by a tall ridge of mossy rock, was the low stone building where the other group of greenfire gunners had been. One of the archers who shot Bungie had been firing from there, as well.
Under the circumstances, neither choice of direction struck her as very appealing. But she couldn’t just stand at the door all day. If Bungie was in here, she had to make at least a reasonable effort to find him.
During both of the attacks she’d seen, it had been the people from the trees who’d shot first. Maybe that meant the people in the stone building weren’t as aggressive. If she’d been Bungie, she decided, that was the direction she would have gone.
It was as good a coin toss as any. Hoping that this wasn’t as stupid as it felt, she started across the open ground toward the building.
She’d covered maybe fifteen steps when a bush six feet away suddenly rustled.
Nicole jumped, nearly biting her tongue. “Bungie?” she called nervously.
The bush rustled again. Then, from around the lower edge, a small face peeked out. An alien face, small and dark-eyed, with a flat snout and wide, lipless mouth. It reminded her of something halfway between a bear and a koala, with maybe a little alley cat thrown in. It didn’t make a sound, but just stared across the waving grass at her, an intense look on its face.
Or maybe that was how the face always looked. “Hello,” Nicole said carefully. “Have you seen someone who looks like me—?”
She broke off as, with a horrendous crashing of leaves and branches, a six-foot-tall version of the same creature bounded into sight from behind another clump of bushes thirty feet away. It gave a single screeching howl and charged.
Nicole jerked, sheer panic freezing her feet in place. There was no chance she could make it back to the door, she knew, not with the speed the creature was making. There was no w
ay she was going to fight it, either—she couldn’t see any weapons, but at six feet tall and with its whole body as wide as Plato’s shoulders, it could kill her just by knocking her over and sitting on her.
Still, Kahkitah was big, too, and even more nasty looking. This thing was wearing clothes—the same kind of smock and sandals the weasels from her first visit had been wearing, only this one was dark red instead of brown—and if it could figure how to put on clothes it was hopefully smart enough to think. If Nicole could convince it that she wasn’t a threat, maybe it would leave her alone.
If not, it would at least probably be a quick death.
So she stood still, remembering to keep her empty hands in sight like the cops always ordered people to do. The creature continued its charge, its feet kicking up clouds of dead leaves as it ran. It reached the bush where the smaller version of itself was still peering out at Nicole.
And abruptly came to a jarring halt, its feet scattering more leaves as they skidded briefly across the ground. Leaning over, it snatched up the smaller koala bear, which gave a sort of gurgling yip as it was hauled upward through the branches. Holding the small one to its chest, the big koala bear began backing away.
And suddenly, Nicole got it.
“It’s all right,” she called, lifting her hands a little. “I wasn’t going to hurt him. Or you. Really.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when she belatedly realized that to the koala bear her speech was probably just so much noise. She was trying to think of some way to use gestures to get her point across when the big koala bear stopped. It cocked its head, and Nicole heard some deep grunts coming from its half-open mouth—
“Who are you?” the words came through Nicole’s translator. “What do you do here?”
Nicole swallowed hard. The koala bear might not be charging at her, but its voice still had an ominous edge to it. “I’m a Sibyl,” she said. “I’m one of the people who were brought here to fix the ship. I thought one of my friends might be in here—he’s been hurt—and I was looking for him. That’s all.”
The koala bear leaned a little closer, its head and upper chest angling out over the smaller koala bear’s head. “What ship is this you speak of?”
“This ship, the one we’re in,” Nicole said, waving a hand around her. “This room is part of a big ship.”
The koala bear gave a little squeak and more grunts. “Impossible,” the creature insisted. “There is no rocking of tides. No smell of sea air. This is not a ship.” It seemed to wilt a little. “This is a nightmare.”
And then, to Nicole’s amazement, the huge keglike body seemed to collapse in on itself. She caught a shimmering glimpse of a thick forest of body hair that had been standing on end as it folded to lie flat against the koala bear’s skin.
And when the process was over, the creature clutching its young to its chest was slightly shorter, much thinner, and far less terrifying. With a final measuring look at Nicole, it turned and started back toward the trees.
Nicole should just let them go, she knew. She’d gotten away without getting killed, and that was all she’d ever wanted from the encounter.
Anyway, she had more than enough on her plate. Bungie was still missing, she herself was standing in the middle of a huge room full of trigger-happy people, and Plato would probably skin her alive if he found out she’d been in here again. Her best move was a quick look around and an even quicker retreat.
But there was something about the way the big koala bear was walking that reminded her of too many of the people in the darker parts of Philadelphia. She could sense the creature’s feelings of weakness, of fear, of despair—
“What’s your name?” she called impulsively.
The koala bear stopped. Slowly, it turned around. “Repeat?”
“I asked what your name was,” Nicole said, already regretting having opened her mouth. Whatever the alien’s problem was, there was nothing Nicole could do about it.
Still, she’d started the conversation. It would be rude to just turn and walk away now. She continued to stand there, waiting, as the koala bear seemed to consider. Then, hesitantly, it walked back to her. Setting down the smaller alien, it bowed. “I am Mispacch, Woman-fifth of the Micawnwi,” she said.
“Hi,” Nicole said, wincing at the ridiculousness of the word. “I take it this is your child?” she added, gesturing toward the smaller koala bear.
“Yes,” Mispacch said, touching the child gently on the back of its head. As she did so, Nicole spotted the glint of metal beneath the flattened hairs on the side of the older alien’s head. “This is Son One. His sister, Daughter One, is yonder behind the trees.”
Nicole frowned. All the trouble to have two kids, and she couldn’t come up with something better to call them? “Don’t they have names?”
“Our people don’t assign names until a child’s fourth birthcycle,” Mispacch said. “By then, personalities and characteristics are evident, and an appropriate name can be chosen.”
“Ah.” That made sense, she had to admit. Her own name, according to her grandmother, meant victory of the people, which was about as far from Nicole’s actual life as you could possibly get. “How long until that happens?”
Mispacch dropped her hand from Son One’s head. “They will never have names,” she said quietly. “They will both die here in this place. As will I.”
Nicole frowned down at the child. “I don’t understand. Are you all sick?”
“My children are starving,” Mispacch said. “As am I.
“We are all of us starving to death.”
eight
Nicole felt her eyes go wide. Starving? “What in the world are you talking about?” she demanded. “The Fyrantha has tons of food.”
“This Fyrantha you speak of may indeed have food,” Mispacch said. “But the dispenser in our living space does not.”
“The dispenser?”
“The machine that provides our food.”
Nicole nodded, finally understanding. So that was why the Fyrantha had sent her here. Something was broken and needed fixing.
Except she wasn’t in the fixing business. She was just the Sibyl. If Mispacch’s food machine needed to be worked on, she would need to bring in one of the crew.
Only who? Carp wouldn’t be interested, especially if he knew this place was off-limits. Neither would Levi or any of the senior men.
But there was Jeff. Not only was he younger than the others, but he’d already said that he liked her. He might be willing to bend the rules for a good cause. “Sounds like it’s broken,” she told Mispacch. “I’ll get one of our repair crew and see what he can do.”
“There is no use,” Mispacch said. “The dispenser isn’t broken. It’s deliberately reducing the amount of food it gives us, a little less each day.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nicole scoffed. “What makes you think it’s deliberate?”
“Because the Masters told us it was.”
Nicole stared at her. “Wait a second. Someone is starving you on purpose? What in hell’s name for?”
“They don’t intend for us to all die,” Mispacch hastened to assure her. “They’ve told us about another dispenser with plenty of food. We need only take possession of it.”
A creepy feeling settled in between Nicole’s shoulder blades. “Let me guess,” she said. “It’s in that stone building over there?”
Mispacch touched her mouth. “True.”
“And there are other people there who aren’t letting you get any of it?”
“Also true,” Mispacch said. “But that too is not unreasonable. Their food also comes from that dispenser. They have already said they’ll kill anyone who tries to take it from them.”
Nicole grimaced. So it boiled down to a turf war, like dozens of others she’d seen.
Only this one was being played for higher stakes than simply who could deal on which street. And apparently it was for the entertainment of some group she’d never heard of.
<
br /> Or had she? Were Mispacch’s Masters the same as Plato’s Shipmasters? “So what are you going to do about it?” she asked. “Just sit here and starve?”
“Not all of us, no,” Mispacch said. “Only the women and children.”
“Because if your buddies with the bows and arrows—” Nicole broke off. Had Mispacch just said—? “The women and children are starving?”
“I’ve said already there isn’t enough food for all,” Mispacch said, some impatience creeping into her voice. “The men—the fighters—cannot be allowed to become too weak to fight.” She spread her hands wide. “How do you not understand?”
“Oh, I understand just fine,” Nicole snarled, a cold rage settling into her gut. She knew how that worked, all right. There had been plenty of times when she’d had to sit back and watch Trake and his buddies divide the take from some score and then throw a few scraps to the women who’d had to put up with them through it all.
Back then, there’d been nothing she could do about it. Here, maybe there was. “Doesn’t mean I like it, but I understand,” she added, digging into her vest pockets and pulling out three food bars. “Here.”
Mispacch seemed taken aback. “What are these?”
“They’re food,” Nicole said, wiggling them a little in her hand. “One each for you and your children.”
Hesitantly, Mispacch reached out a hand. Then, she drew it back. “I cannot,” she said sadly. “Any extra food must go to the men. If they cannot fight, all of us will die.”
“I can get more for them,” Nicole said impatiently. “But these three are for you. Go on, take them.”
Mispacch’s body hair flared briefly, then flattened out again. This time, from her closer perspective, Nicole could see that the end of each hair split into several more hairs, umbrella-like. That was probably what had made the Micawnwi’s larger size look solid. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I cannot.”
Nicole ground her teeth together. This was getting both ridiculous and stupid. “At least take a couple for your children.”
Mispacch hesitated, then reached out and delicately took one of the three bars from Nicole’s hand. “They may share one,” she said. “The other two must go to the men.”