by Timothy Zahn
She gave a whistle and began tearing away the food bar’s wrapper. From the bushes a dozen yards away another small Micawnwi appeared and scampered through the grass. Son One had meanwhile settled himself at his mother’s feet in a sort of cross-legged yoga pose that hurt Nicole just to look at it. His sister joined him, and Mispacch carefully broke the bar in half.
And then paused, staring at the food. “What now?” Nicole growled. Was she going to have to force the damn food down their throats?
“The smell is odd,” Mispacch said. “I fear there is something in this that we cannot properly digest.”
Nicole felt her nose wrinkle. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to her. Certainly Kahkitah never seemed to have a problem with the food in the dining room. “What do you mean by properly? Like it’ll give you the runs or something?”
“I don’t understand that word,” Mispacch said. “I fear the food will make them ill.”
Nicole looked down at the two children. Even with their alien faces, there was no mistaking the intensity with which they were staring at the food in their mother’s hands. They were hungry, and were clearly willing to chance it. “I guess you’re going to have to try one after all,” she told Mispacch.
“Yes.” Once again, the Micawnwi hesitated. Then, with a suddenness that was almost startling, she brought her hand up and took a big bite from one of the halves. Nicole caught a glimpse of a double ring of bright flat teeth, and then the bite was gone. “It’s done,” Mispacch said. “Now we wait.”
“How long?” Nicole asked, suddenly remembering her own shrinking schedule. Even if she pretended she’d walked really slowly, there was only so much time she could squeeze out of a supposed round-trip to the medical center.
Still, with the crew split in half, each group might assume she’d simply come back and was hanging out with the other one. That should theoretically give her until lunchtime before she was missed.
Of course, if Carp talked to Sam or Allyce later and found out that Nicole had never shown up, there would be a whole different level of hell to pay. But she would cross that bridge when she got to it.
“Only a few minutes, I think,” Mispacch said. “Our bodies process food quickly.”
“Mmm,” Nicole said, searching for something else to say. She’d never liked awkward silences, and this situation had the potential to be the king of awkward silences. “So tell me what happened to you and the rest of your people back there. How did you get here?”
“We were on a shopping trip with a group from my neighborhood and a group from a different neighborhood,” Mispacch said. “It’s a ritual sharing of the marketplace that goes back to the peace exchanges of many centuries ago. I was searching among items of clothing for my children when a group of strange beings with glowing wings appeared. They took hold of us, and we were soon in a large metal room filled with strange electrical instruments.”
“You were all in the same room?” Nicole asked, thinking back to the round teleport room where she and Bungie had arrived. “How many of you were there?”
“We are forty.” Mispacch made a grunting sound. “Or we were when we first arrived. Yes, we were all in the same room.”
Nicole pursed her lips. Her teleport room had been way too small to accommodate forty Micawnwi and the Wisps who’d grabbed them. That meant there were at least two such rooms aboard the Fyrantha. That could be a useful bit of information somewhere down the line. “What happened next?”
“Strange creatures came,” Mispacch said, her body giving a sort of quivering twitch. “They called themselves the Masters and forced us into another group of metal rooms that they called the hive.”
“The hive?” Nicole asked, frowning. She’d assumed someone in her group—Plato, probably—had given their rooms that name. But apparently it was in general use around the Fyrantha. That might mean it was one of the Shipmasters’ terms, which might give her an idea of the kind of people they were.
That, or it was simply how her translator always translated that concept.
“Yes,” Mispacch said. “Even then, I assumed we had all been drugged to unconsciousness and were somewhere within our city, and that this was the playing out of some ritual I’d never heard of.”
She paused, her eyes steady on Nicole. “Then the creatures spoke, and told us we were no longer on our own world.”
“No, you’re not,” Nicole confirmed. “We’re aboard a spaceship called the Fyrantha, traveling somewhere between the stars.”
“Between the stars,” Mispacch murmured. “Some of our storytellers speak of such travel. But those tales were always assumed to be fiction.”
Nicole nodded. “Same with us.”
“But why do we travel so?” Mispacch asked. “What is the purpose of this voyage?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole admitted. “Still trying to figure that out. What happened after that?”
“At first, very little,” Mispacch said. “There are five dominant men among us, and they spent some time establishing their leadership hierarchy. Mostly, we all searched for a way out of the ten rooms of our hive prison. In one of the rooms were two machines, one of which provided food and the other water.”
“In ever-diminishing amounts.”
“Yes, but not at first,” Mispacch confirmed. “In the beginning the supply was more than adequate for us all. All were fed to satisfaction, including the women and children.”
“How many women and children are there?” Nicole asked.
“Ten women and four children,” Mispacch said. “There are also three young boys, but they are nearly to the age of maturity and it’s been decided that they’ll be counted among the fighters.”
Which therefore granted them a full share of food. Nicole was willing to bet that they were related to whoever had come out on top of the status dog pile. This thing sounded more and more like the way Trake did things. “So when did the food supply stop being adequate?”
“After the third day,” Mispacch said. “The supply of water has continued unchanged, but the amount of food has decreased with each passing meal.”
“Is that when the men graciously invited you and the children to take a hike?”
“Again, not at first,” Mispacch said. “For two days the men continued to divide the food equably, each getting less but none being refused.” She hissed something Nicole’s translator apparently was unable or unwilling to translate. “On the third morning of the smaller portions a voice spoke from the food dispenser. It named itself the Oracle and told us about the additional machine inside a large chamber which we would now be permitted to enter. The Oracle promised the other dispenser would more than make up our current shortfall, but also warned that it was under the control of enemies who would first have to be defeated.”
“Have you seen these enemies?” Nicole asked.
Mispacch hissed again. “All too closely,” she said grimly. “Two of our men went into the chamber to search out this dispenser. Only one came back, with a description of small but fierce creatures who had killed his companion and driven him away with weapons and arrows.”
“Did he give you a description?”
“Even if he hadn’t, I’ve also now seen them.” Mispacch gestured to Nicole. “They are shorter than us, shorter even than you, with thick brown body hair, long necks, and small heads. Their snouts are long and their eyes black.” She ran a hand down her reddish outfit. “They wear garments similar to this, but in brown instead of red.”
Nicole frowned. The description sounded awfully similar to the weasel things she and Bungie had run into on their first trip in here. Weasel creatures, moreover, that had also been trying to capture the stone building.
But who had they been trying to capture it from? Apparently not the Micawnwi—from what Mispacch had said it didn’t sound like her people had ever been in control of the building. How many alien groups were in here, anyway?
More to the point, both sides in that earlier war had been using greenfir
e guns, not halberds and arrows. Had those other weapons been lost or destroyed?
“The Oracle told us that a storage closet in our hive would now be unlocked, and that inside we would find weapons equal to those of our new enemies, which it named the Cluufes. But it also warned that the Cluufes would not be easy to defeat. It urged the men to spend a few days first in learning how to use the weapons.”
“Which of course they didn’t?”
“No, they did,” Mispacch said. “They worked and trained for two days before attacking.” She made another untranslatable sound. “But they also realized that spending those days on less and less food might leave them too weak to fight. It was then that they decided that the food must henceforth be reserved solely for the men.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, thinking hard. If whoever was manipulating this—the Oracle or the Masters or whoever—if they were cutting off the food supply from outside the Micawnwi quarters, there was probably nothing Jeff or anyone else could do about it. The arena stretched well past the dead end in the portside hull corridor and a similar blockage on the starboard side of the ship, which meant her team had no access to anything on the arena’s far side.
But if the food was being cut off by tweaking something inside the dispenser itself, they might be able to fix it. “Okay,” she said again. “There might be a way to make the dispenser give you more food. Let me go see if I can get someone to come in and look at it.”
“Can’t you come and examine it?” Mispacch asked hopefully.
Nicole shook her head. “Sorry, but I’m not really one of the repair people.”
Mispacch’s hairs bristled. “You said you were.”
“I’m part of the crew, yes, but I’m only the Sibyl,” Nicole said. “I listen to the ship and tell the others what to do.”
“A foreman, yes?” Mispacch said.
“No, I’m not—I can’t do anything,” Nicole insisted. “Really.”
“Can’t you at least look?” Mispacch pleaded. “Calling others would take time—”
Abruptly, she broke off. Turning away from Nicole and the children, she buried her face in the nearest bush and threw up.
Sometimes, especially when Nicole was really, really drunk, the vomiting seemed to go on forever. With Mispacch, to her relief, the whole thing was over much faster. “You okay?” she asked as the Micawnwi slowly straightened up again. “I mean … you know what I mean.”
“I’m unharmed.” Mispacch took a couple of deep breaths, her hand pressed hard against her stomach. “I was right. Your food is of no use to us.” She cocked her head. “Won’t you please come and look at the machine?”
Nicole sighed. Thirty seconds ago, she’d been ready to walk out the door and try to figure out how to broach this subject to Jeff. Now, staring into Mispacch’s face, she realized with a sinking feeling that she was stuck. If she turned her back on these people now, she would worry about it all day. “Fine—I’ll look at the damn thing,” she said. “You well enough to travel? Good. Let’s go.”
* * *
Nicole had known from the start that the arena was big. On her first visit she’d estimated it could be as big as a football field.
She’d been wrong. It was a whole lot bigger.
And the sheer size wasn’t the most amazing part. Past the first line of hills and trees, the ones visible from the arena door, were more hills, along with grassy hollows, more trees and bushes and plants so weird that she couldn’t even mentally categorize them, and lots of grass of different colors and sizes. The arena was also peppered with craggy rocks, some of them forming ridges that seemed to cut the landscape into smaller sections, while other narrow spires stuck straight up nearly to the glowing greenish-blue sky, almost like natural signposts whose signs had been lost. At one point she and the three Micawnwi even had to cross a narrow stream that wended its way down from a set of hills and disappeared somewhere past a line of purple trees.
Fortunately, the plant life seemed to have been well maintained. There were also several paths, some of them little more than narrow dirt trails, others wider and made of flat stones that had been set together. Mispacch led the way down one of the latter, which took them between two sets of hills and several clumps of trees.
With Nicole’s full attention on the wilderness-like scenery around her, it was almost a shock when they rounded the final hill and she saw the plain, gray arena wall looming up ahead. There was another large door like the one she’d come in through at the other end, closed and presumably locked.
But about twenty yards to the right of the main door was another, smaller door, more like the sliding doors in her part of the ship. This door, unlike the big one, was open.
Open, and guarded. A Micawnwi stood at one side, a halberd gripped in his hand as he watched the four of them approach. “You are going to tell him that I’m here to help, right?” Nicole murmured to Mispacch.
“Of course,” Mispacch said hesitantly. “But I fear that the men may not welcome your assistance. You’re an alien, after all, and it was clearly an alien power who brought us here.”
Nicole felt her stomach tighten. “You could have said something about that before now.”
“Would you have come if I had?”
Nicole glowered. No, she probably wouldn’t have. At least, not until she had Jeff with her. “Just make it clear to him that I had nothing to do with your kidnapping. That I’m as much a prisoner as you are.”
“Perhaps,” Mispacch murmured. “Yet you work to fix the ship in which the Masters have imprisoned us.”
Nicole stared at her. “You don’t believe me, either, do you? You think I’m—?”
Abruptly, she stopped. The hell with this. “Nice meeting you,” she ground out. “Good luck with that whole fighting and starving thing.” She spun around and started stalking back toward the other end of the arena.
And jerked to a halt, barely in time, as Mispacch’s two children moved onto the stone path in front of her. “Forget it,” she snapped, and tried to sidestep them.
But the small Micawnwi again moved to block her, and again she had to stop short to keep from running over them. “Get out of my way,” she ordered.
Neither child moved. They just stood there, their eyes lifted to hers, looking in their alien way exactly like the street children she’d had to walk past every day back home. Like she herself had been not too many years ago.
The hell with them. Nicole had managed to harden her heart to the street kids. She could damn well do it here, too.
Daughter One murmured something. “Please?” Nicole’s translator whispered to her.
Nicole swore under her breath, not caring whether the children understood her or not. She didn’t need this. Didn’t need it, didn’t want it, and the longer she delayed in getting back to Carp the deeper the pile of trouble she was going to be in. Sticking her neck out just because a couple of alien kids looked pathetic and said please would be an utterly stupid thing to do.
To hell with them. To hell with every single last one of them.
She spun back around to face Mispacch. “You want me to look at the dispenser, or not?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Mispacch said simply.
Nicole cursed one final time, then gave it up. “You’ve got ten minutes,” she said. “Move it.”
The guard was still gripping his halberd as the group approached. But now that Nicole was closer she saw that he didn’t seem all that comfortable with the weapon. He was fidgeting awkwardly with it, like a new gang member who’d just been handed his first gun. Whoever this Oracle was, it had probably been right to suggest they take a few days to learn how to use the things.
Still, it wouldn’t take much skill for him to skewer her. She hoped Mispacch could make a compelling case as to why he shouldn’t.
“Who is this?” the guard called as they approached. His voice was as nervous as his twitchy fingers. “Who is this you bring, Mispacch Woman-fifth?”
“This is the Sibyl, Varko
s Boy-second,” Mispacch called back. “She’s offered her skills to repair the food dispenser.”
Varkos’s fur fluffed. “I am no longer Varkos Boy-second,” he said stiffly. “I am Varkos Man-second.”
“You’re still a child, whether the men count you among them or not,” Mispacch corrected, just as stiffly. “If I therefore choose to address you as—”
“Excuse me, but we’re in kind of a hurry here,” Nicole cut in. She really didn’t have time for this. Especially not a stupid alpha-dog argument she’d heard a hundred times before. “You want to step aside and let us pass, Varkos Man-second?”
It seemed to her that the Micawnwi straightened up a little. “Wait here,” he said in a formal sort of tone. “I’ll inform Amrew Man-second that you wish entrance.”
He turned and headed briskly through the door, the end of his halberd bumping against the jamb as he passed it. “He is still a child,” Mispacch said sourly.
“I don’t care if he’s still in diapers,” Nicole growled back. “In the real world you say what you have to to get what you want. And to not get poked by some kid with a stick.”
“He wouldn’t have hurt you,” Mispacch said, still clearly annoyed at Varkos’s attitude. “As a child, he would first have to be given an order by one of the dominants. Since none are present, he could only use force if you first used force against him.”
Nicole grimaced. Only now he’d gone to fetch this Amrew character, who presumably was a dominant and could order the kid to skewer her. Terrific.
But it was too late to reconsider. Mispacch had barely finished her explanation when Varkos reappeared around the open door, a taller Micawnwi in tow. “This being is named the Sibyl,” the younger one said, again in that formal-sounding voice. “Mispacch Woman-fifth declares she will repair the food dispenser.”
“Hold on,” Nicole said, holding up her hands. “I’m only here to look at the machine. I never promised I could fix it.”
“Are you a woman?” the older Micawnwi asked.