“Es?” he handed me the medallion, stooping so I could put it back around his neck, soot stains and all. “Thanks, old friend.”
Old friend. Is that what he still thought of me? Despite our situation, and the real need to do something about it, I put my hands on Paul’s forearms to keep him close. “How long have you know this was me?” I asked him.
“Known? Not long.” He smiled, then bent his head to press his lips gently on my forehead. “I’ve suspected for many years, Esen. You told me you would be yourself, no matter what your shape. But you kept finding valid reasons not to use certain forms, so I started keeping track, just out of curiosity.”
Excessive curiosity, I grumbled to myself, but kept listening. Lefebvre was paying attention, too, looking fascinated and appalled at the same time. I felt much the same.
“All of them had one thing in common: visibly distinct younger stages,” Paul continued. “That didn’t quite answer the question, until I had some experience with my own youngsters and began to notice some—behavioral signs,” he said with a chuckle that invited me to share, rather than mocking me. “I confess, I wasn’t sure you were this young until it was plain you’d never molted as a Panacian before.”
“My age is relative,” I said stiffly, lifting my hands from his arms.
“I know,” he answered quickly, as if concerned about my reaction. And so you should be, I thought, once I know what it is.
Lefebvre started to say something, then stopped, shaking his head as if he’d decided he didn’t want to know.
I frowned warningly. “I’m not a little girl.” Well, to be technical, I was, I reminded myself honestly, but that wasn’t the point. Or rather, it was.
“You are almost six hundred years old and not Human,” Paul said. “I understand that—”
“Really?” I asked. “As a Human—and an adult—you have biological imperatives hardwired into your very being. Trust me, Paul, I know about such things. I never wanted to be Human with you—to have those instincts affect our Web, our friendship.” This last came out past a lower lip that had started trembling. My eyes were filling up with moisture again. “See!” I complained bitterly. “This form is—” my voice broke in frustration.
Paul nodded. “I don’t deny I feel protective. And proud. But that’s not biology alone—you know I feel those things all of the time, whether you have fangs, fur, or scales.” His eyes gleamed. “Not to mention aggravated, confused, impatient—”
My lips stretched into a smile, as he’d meant them to. There was that about both of us being Human—this cell-deep connection between us that couldn’t exist when I wore any other form. It was seductively like sharing.
It was so much less. I was suddenly more alone than I’d ever been, a desolation so piercing I almost cycled to try and find my own kind. I’d understood the dying Ganthor too well.
Whatever Paul read in my face, it made him wrap me tightly in his arms. “I know, Es,” he murmured into my hair. “It isn’t enough. I’m sorry.”
“If you know that much, my Human friend,” I said, bearing the embrace because it comforted him and my Human-self. Perhaps, I confessed to myself, it comforted something in Esen as well. “If you know that, you know how much I wish it were.”
There was a knocking sound.
“While I hate to interrupt,” Lefebvre said dryly. “We do have some problems a little more pressing.”
“Yes, of course,” Paul replied, ruffling my hair as he released me and went over to stand by Lefebvre at the door. “Esen?”
“It’s Largas, or it isn’t,” I said with a shrug.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Lefebvre said briskly. He held the blister stick with what looked like expertise, while Paul stood ready with his unfortunately permanent form of persuasion. I moved to stand so I couldn’t be seen immediately by someone entering, but didn’t bother hiding. It wasn’t as though I could hide the others with me, I told myself.
Paul unlocked the door.
Meony-ro, looking every bit Kraal military and not at all the happy-go-lucky party goer of my more recent acquaintance, took a long step inside, sweeping the muzzle of a very unpleasant-looking example of the latest in nonprojectile rifles with a smooth twist of his body. The muzzle settled itself pointing toward Logan.
Even his speech patterns seemed to have undergone this metamorphosis, becoming clipped and curt: “Received your message, Hom Cameron.” I thought Meony-ro paled ever so slightly as he looked at Paul and saw the abundant signs of abuse marring his face, neck, and upper body. His voice hardened. “We have this ship.”
Lefebvre didn’t even blink on hearing yet another name for his infamous cousin. “What about the ’Watch?”
Meony-ro looked to Paul, waiting for a nod before answering: “The Tly cruiser has remained a nonparticipant.” He paused. “Sir, we have not been able to locate Fem Esolesy Ki. Do you know if she’s all right?”
Paul gave a great sigh, staggering and then catching himself. “The Fem was never involved in all this, Meony-ro, thank you for your concern. She’s safe and waiting for me on Iftsen Secondus. This is Captain Rudy Lefebvre of the Russell III,” he indicated Lefebvre, who’d wisely put away his stick. The Kraal’s weapon began to lift, and Paul added hastily: “A fellow captive and friend. I owe him Clan Debt.”
Meony-ro let his rifle rest on its shoulder sling, aiming it with his left hand while pressing the fingers of his right hand to the faded tattoos on each of his cheeks—the indelible marks that linked Clan to Clan among the family-conscious Kraal. Clan Debt was something that maintained itself through successive generations, had frequently spawned wars, and was considered by the Kraal to be the only meaningful currency between individuals of honor. By invoking it, in Meony-ro’s eyes Paul had basically adopted Lefebvre and any offspring he might have—or had—into his family.
Considering what Lefebvre knew, I thought practically, we might as well.
The Kraal looked interrogatively in my direction. I waved. “My niece Gloria,” Lefebvre volunteered, impressively quick on the uptake. “And that’s the one responsible for Hom Cameron’s present state,” he added, pointing at Logan.
From Paul’s immediate frown, I knew he hadn’t planned to tell Meony-ro for reasons that were abundantly clear as the Kraal went over to the unconscious Tly and rammed the mouth of his weapon into the approximate area of Logan’s stomach.
“No!” Paul ordered. “We may need him.” Meony-ro’s expression was definitely doubtful, but he listened.
“First things first,” Paul went on, looking more and more like a being on the verge of collapse. “Let’s get out of here, get Logan locked up, and see what our status is. Then we need to head to Iftsen Secondus as quickly as possible.”
As Meony-ro spoke into a wrist com, another piece of military-issue gear not typically found in the storerooms of Cameron & Ki Exports, I met Paul’s eyes and knew what he now saw in mine.
Questions.
Starting with how our desk clerk had responded—and so effectively—to a distress call I’d tight-beamed to Joel Largas on Minas XII.
And ending with why Paul hadn’t been in the least surprised to see him.
Elsewhere
LEFEBVRE opened his eyes, then yawned. “Quite the dream,” he told himself out loud, sitting up. Then he looked around, disoriented.
This wasn’t the Russell III. And it certainly wasn’t his Latasian jelly-bed.
He dropped his head back onto the pillow. It hadn’t been a dream, then.
In the space of a day—a mere day!—he’d found both Paul Ragem and Kearn’s Monster.
Among the many scenarios he’d imagined over the last few years, none had included friendship with the one nor the reality of the other.
He couldn’t help grinning, feeling as though he’d awakened from a much longer sleep than a night. Esen. What an amazing creature. Lefebvre’s mind brimmed with questions. From what little Paul had been able to tell him in private before disap
pearing into the healing sleep of the ’Lass’ intact med unit, she could become any intelligent life-form in the blink of an eye. It was wonderful. It was—
Kearn’s Monster. Lefebvre sat up again, leaning forward as an entirely new set of thoughts thrust themselves into his mind, destroying any sense of ease.
He hadn’t needed Paul’s reminder that only the two of them could know the truth of Esen’s existence or abilities. The message had been clear enough in her ocean-deep eyes. She trusted him, because she had no choice.
She trusted Paul because the two of them were as close as living things could be, Lefebvre thought, somewhat surprised to feel a twinge of envy.
The Esen Monster, he reminded himself, as though the name he’d secretly scoffed at would put some different look in those eyes, make that small face live up to its reputation as a killer. It didn’t seem possible to reconcile the evidence Kearn trotted out at the least sign of interest—or lack of it—with the reality of Esen. A tendency to explode into a practically harmless puff of smoke hardly qualified her to tear apart ships in space and consume their crews. Lefebvre shook his head. There had been no time for the really important answers—and little privacy—since their rescue.
The Kraal—Lefebvre recognized the tattoos if not the face—had indeed made short work of the Vegas Lass. There had apparently been fake ident codes and keys to overcome a last-minute attempt to lock out the approaching ship. All preparations that had to have been ready long before Esen’s plea for help hit translight.
And she’d noticed, too. That face, childish as it might seem, could assume very adult expressions indeed, including the long, considered look Esen had given Paul as he’d fallen asleep in the med unit.
Lefebvre thought back to his childhood dreams of being an alien specialist, of working on a First Contact Team, of being the one to meet a totally new species.
He hadn’t expected it to come true quite like this.
31: Hold Morning; Galley Afternoon
IFTSEN Secondus.
The wonder, I thought, as I usually did on approaching this planet, was that the Panacians had bothered to look here for life. It couldn’t have been easy for them. They detested wearing spacesuits or e-rigs and, until this place, had happily left exploring poisonous atmospheres to others.
Paul stood beside me, looking out the viewport. “You’d never know they were here,” he said thoughtfully.
I nodded agreement. It wasn’t as though the Iftsen had gone out of their way to attract attention, as other species had done—particularly Humans, who maintained an extensive number of ships devoted to nothing but making themselves known to the rest of the universe. Not a shy bunch, I smiled to myself. Not that the Iftsen were shy, they were just too busy to reach outward.
Like the Panacians, the Iftsen built. Unlike the Panacians, the Iftsen didn’t alter what had been done before, but kept everything, incorporating the old into the new, building their cities into towering mazes of evolving styles. Scholars didn’t need to dig into ruins on Iftsen. There were none. They only needed to take a perfectly functional lift system down through the various aeons of construction, all maintained with care.
The same went for their other art forms, especially epic song. The Iftsen’s oral history was one of the most intact of any species within web-memory. They almost didn’t need us. Almost. As Ersh had said, it was our responsibility to preserve the Iftsens’ accomplishments against disaster, as long as they existed only on this one fragile rock in space.
A rock perpetually shrouded in heavy, multilayered clouds, seasoned by photochemical reactions my web-self found thoroughly fascinating, Iftsen Secondus was a rusty beacon below us. Light reached her surface as a faint, diffuse presence—encouraging the growth of plants with immense flat leaves, outstretched to starve their neighbors. It was a place insulated from the climatic fluctuations that charged the evolutionary changes pushing life elsewhere. Intelligence had arisen here, several times, in no hurry and with no need to impress anything else.
The Iftsen maintained two shipcities: Upperside and Underside. Upperside, as its name implied, was an orbital station, Human-operated, and received most of the traffic to and from their world—a practical concession to the majority of trading species, who couldn’t survive the Iftsens’ chemical-rich atmosphere and would prefer not to strain their ships’ scrubbers either.
The other. Underside, had been tacked on to Brakistem, a city-state growing in the lee of the low mountains which constituted the western shore of the famed Bridklestet Sea. According to several Iftsen sagas, their species had originated in its depths. As there weren’t, and had never been, depths greater than a meter anywhere in the Bridklestet, and its waters were acidic enough to keep even the Iftsen from wading, this seemed less than likely. But creamy foam trailed across its calm darkness in intricate ribbons of fluorescence and I remembered long nights seaside spent listening to the haunting, whistling call of the Bridklestet cranes. A life-form, I reminded myself, with nothing whatsoever in common with a bird and a fair similarity to mobile bamboo. Ephemerals cared so deeply about naming; I frequently found I had to hold my tongue—or whatever—when someone proudly recited the name of something and the word brought to mind something quite different.
The ’Lass would leave us at Upperside. This was, according to Paul, where he expected to meet Esolesy Ki. It was also where Lefebvre would catch a transport to Panacia and his supposed niece would be safely on her way home. A suitably vague home. As I’d feared, being a visibly young Human induced parental instincts in the most unlikely individuals of the species, and it was becoming painfully obvious my Human-self would have great difficulty vanishing unnoticed.
“We’d better get ready,” Paul told me. “Unless you want to stay and watch the docking?”
I shuddered. “There’s nothing appealing in witnessing Meony-ro’s attempt to ram one end of this ship into a hole. I’ve seen him drive a grav sled through the warehouse, remember?” I drummed my fingers against the rim of the viewport. “Paul, explain again why you have to come with me.”
“No.”
I slid a glance his way, pretending to keep looking out the port. Paul knew how much I loved watching the approach to a planet—it had been his idea to visit this window beside the massive cargo door. “That’s not particularly reasonable. We’ll both need e-rigs, there’s nothing you can do that I—”
“No.” This time, the word issued through tightly-set lips. As if growling impressed me, I told myself, but desisted.
“Hom Cameron? May I have a word?”
We turned as one to greet Meony-ro. Who was piloting? I thought with some alarm, then was more alarmed by the look of what had to be mortification on the Kraal’s face.
So was Paul, asking quickly, “What’s happened?”
Meony-ro hesitated, then looked pointedly at me. “Perhaps Fem Gloria would care to join her uncle on the bridge and watch the docking procedure?”
She would not.
Paul put his hand on my back and pushed firmly enough to send me forward a step. “Fine idea. Off you go.” I pulled my lips back from my teeth in what probably didn’t pass as a smile and went. Logically, Paul would tell me what was going on as soon as he could. He was remembering to keep in character, better than I.
Just one more reason why I had to cycle out of this child-form as soon as possible.
As if I needed more encouragement, Lefebvre’s enthusiastic approach to our invented relationship provided it. He greeted me with such an air of pleased surprise I wanted to dodge back into the lift. Our interactions, I decided, should improve substantially once he’d spent time with me as something with warts and pungent body odor.
In the meantime, there was no doubt I was the favored young niece, invited to perch in the captain’s chair and learn all about docking.
I endured, accepting my role for the sake of camouflage and remembering every detail. Pungent body odor, I reminded myself as I nodded cheerfully to Lefebvre, and slime.
The erstwhile captain of the Russell III did know what he was doing, ordering last minute adjustments which Skalet-memory told me would nudge us perfectly into Upperside’s assigned parking spot—somewhat of a relief as the five crewmembers following Lefebvre’s commands were unknown to me. Chase had left ten of the Vegas Lass’ regular crew of fifteen back on Minas XII, under the cover of their being investigated by Port Authority, a reasonable indication they weren’t part of her scheming. She’d filled key stations with hired mercs on Panacia, taking Able Joe and the unconscious Lefebvre as her only passengers.
Meony-ro, obstinately closemouthed about the ship he’d used to follow Chase from Minas—for that was what he must have done, no matter that Paul shrugged away the notion when I broached it—had nonetheless been able to carry enough crew with him to provide a skeleton crew for the ’Lass while leaving sufficient to escort Chase and her accomplices back to Joel Largas.
And Logan, I thought, as Lefebvre ordered the lockdown of ship’s systems and a switch to station air. They’d taken him as well, a clear provocation to the Tly I found exceptionally dangerous, no matter how unpalatable it would have been to let Paul and Lefebvre’s tormentor go free. I hadn’t tried to argue, knowing the futility of the attempt. Humans rarely saw the bigger picture when personal grievances were involved.
“It had been a risk—”
At a loss for words, I simply locked gazes with Paul. He blinked first. “So they’re all free now,” I said then.
He shook his head, a lock of black hair tumbling over his forehead. “The Tly weren’t interested in any disputes between traders from the Fringe,” he corrected. “They only took the person who mattered to them.”
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