by Anthology
The Dryth guard who had patted me down returned from some kind of errand. He leaned over and whispered in Tagrod’s ear. I turned my head away, making it look like I was watching the stage, but I focused most of my attention on the Dryth’s lips. I didn’t catch it all, but I caught the gist.
“Othrick tells me that you aren’t even on the schedule today, Tal.” Tagrod reached down and speared a slug with a single talon. He popped it in his mouth, again giving me a chance to see those impressive teeth. “Is this true?”
I curled my neck in the Lhassae gesture of embarrassment. “Yes.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Othrick asked, his hand resting on the ornately carved butt of his multipistol.
“Forgive Othrick,” Tagrod said, grinning. “He always suspects that a Lhassa is planning to kill me. We’re friends, though—aren’t we?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
The big Lorca nodded. “Good, good. I’m glad.” He leaned forward, sniffing me with his broad nostrils. “You smell strangely.”
“I wear perfume.”
Tagrod grunted. “I don’t think that’s it.”
I stood ready to pop the multipistol out of my chest and drill the giant merchant at the slightest sign of the Dryth going for their weapons or of those big talons reaching out for me. Had I underestimated the Lorcan olfactory abilities, or maybe Tagrod had had them boosted somehow? It didn’t matter. I made my face look confused; I decided to reel him in a little early: “I’m sick.”
“I see.” Tagrod hummed. “Is it serious?”
I mimicked embarrassment as best I could. I leaned close, but not too close—no free Lhassa gets too close to a Lorca willingly—and stage-whispered. “I had an accident. A couple organs were ruined real bad. I got some germline engineered replacements, but…”
“But they’re losing integrity, aren’t they?” Tagrod shook his mammoth head and clicked his muscular tongue. “A cheap clinic, poor standards. Probably promised you the stars, didn’t they?”
I hung my head. “Yeah…pretty much.”
A single talon caught me by the chin, but so gently that it was barely a caress. Soft pressure made me raise my head and meet the grand, yellow eyes of the Lhassa’s ancient predator. “Which organs, pretty Tal?”
“Both kidneys, a liver, part of my heart…” I tried to whip up some tears, but I’ve never had the knack—no really effective valves for that kind of thing in my external membranes. I settled, instead, for a shuddering sigh.
Tagrod frowned at this for a moment, then rolled his massive shoulders in a Lorcan shrug. “That sounds like quite an accident.”
“There are a lot of accidents on Sadura.” I shot back, putting a little steel into my voice. I was letting the big fish play with the line now, giving him some slack to drag out. If he thought the catch was too easy or if he smelled a trap, my hook wouldn’t set.
Tagrod hummed. “Quite true.”
Everybody at the table was watching me. Othrick and the other Dryth were ready for action, probably worried I had a sliverblade secreted in my marsupium or something. The Thraad had both his eyestalks trained on me, his tentacles quivering with a kind of academic interest at my behavior. Even the feed slaves had finished their feasting and were eyeing me with expressions that were probably unreadable even for other Lhassa, let alone me. I wondered what that was about—was I competition of some kind? Did they hope Tagrod would devour me before themselves?
“Tell me, Tal, why did you come to see me?” Tagrod asked. He folded his arms.
Carefully, carefully…“I was interested in speaking with you. You don’t seem as cruel as…as…”
“As you’ve heard Lorca to be?” Tagrod laughed sharply. “Charming, simply charming. This truly is the planet of the adventurous, isn’t it?”
I bowed my head in acceptance of his praise. It never hurt to stoke the ego of an apex predator.
Tagrod smiled at me and told me things I already knew. “My slaves have dined, and I regret I am about to depart. I have appreciated your company, little Tal.”
“I’m leaving too.” I said.
I could see the thoughts clicking into place in the Lorca’s head. The words he said next were the words I had been hoping to hear all night. “Would you care to accompany me? It is so rare I am able to converse with a free Lhassa. I would hear tales of the homeworld.”
I did my best to look cautious. “I don’t know.” I made a show of glancing back at the other Lhassa scattered around the floor at the Zaltarrie. I knew that many of them had been shooting me and Tagrod dirty looks ever since I came over here, but this was the first time I allowed myself to act as if I knew.
Tagrod snorted. “Don’t mind them. Small minds and small hearts—vestiges of a bygone era. You’ve outgrown them, Tal.” He held out his hand, talons and all, for me to take it. “Shall we?”
I have a lot of textural control over my external membranes, but simulating skin that felt perfectly to the touch could be difficult. I focused as much of my concentration as I could spare on making my hand feel right and gently laid my palm on his. My little Lhassa-size hand seemed like a dry leaf atop the large, flat boulder of the Lorca’s palm. Had I bones, I might have been worried about him crushing me. As it stood, he merely placed his other hand atop mine and held it there for a moment. He smiled, still keeping his teeth hidden. In his great, yellow eyes I saw something like affection. Maybe he thought of me as a pet; maybe his overtures of companionship were sincere. I doubted it. “I’ll go with you.” I said.
Tagrod stood, his massive bulk shifting the delicate balance of the entire club as it was suspended between its thousand Qunixi spindles. The Zaltarrie swayed slightly, as though moved by a gentle breeze. At the great Lorca’s stirring, a host of black-clad Qunixi seemed to appear from nowhere. The arachnids shifted tables and shooed patrons from his path with a flurry of hairy-legged activity so he could move to the service entrance—the only door large enough to easily admit him. Othrick preceded his master out the door while the other Dryth kept his unblinking eyes fixed on me. I fell in with the Thraad, who evidently wasn’t the chatty type; he slid along on his single muscular foot with barely even a flick of an eye-stalk in my direction. As we left, our little parade drew the baleful glares of more than a few Lhassa. I knew they considered me—well, considered Tal—a traitor, but that fact made no impact on me. How easily they judged how others sought to survive, the self-righteous prigs. Every creature had to find its niche—how did they know this wouldn’t be Tal’s? Who were they to deny her it?
This train of thought was academic, though—I wasn’t Tal in the first place, and I was about to do something most of the Lhassa in that room would approve of, anyway. I focused on the task at hand. Slowly, I pushed the multipistol near the surface of my body and held it between my Lhassa breasts. It was a sleek model and only made the slightest bulge beneath my ‘clothing.’ We would see how long it would take the Dryth to notice it.
Outside, we found ourselves standing on an aluminum terrace that jutted out of the side of the Zaltarrie. Just over our heads were wrist-thick bundles of Quinixi cabling that protruded from the spherical bulk of the club at regular intervals. Large bins of garbage were lined up on either side of the door. In one bin I could hear the thumping and squelching of one of my own species, feeding on the scraps tossed out for vermin like itself.
Like me.
As we stood there, waiting for Tagrod’s air-yacht to arrive, the scavenging Tohrroid poked a pseudopod above the edge of the trash bin to get a look at us. It colored itself bright green to attract attention and warbled something in a loose approximation of Dryth Basic. “Food? Food? Please?” It reached out to us, forming a crude four-finger hand.
The feed-slaves recoiled from its touch. The Dryth behind me stepped forward to slap away its tendril. “Get back in the trash, smack!” The Tohrroid withdrew its tendril immediately and went back to trying to digest whatever semi-organic refuse it had come upon. The Dryth wiped
his hand on his sleeve. “Ugh. I think it slimed on me.”
Tagrod laughed in rich, musical tones. He reached into his robe and withdrew a small confection of some kind. He threw it in the trash bin and gave me a wink. “The Dryth never have understood charity, have they, Tal?”
I hugged myself, as though cold. “The smacks have always creeped me out, too. I think everybody should look like…like something. Like what they are.”
“Ah,” said Tagrod, “but that would remove all the excitement in life, wouldn’t it?”
That statement bothered me. I managed to suppress a shudder—he didn’t know anything. He was a sham—his charity, his gentility, his humor—all a big lie designed to lure in prey. Just like me. Just like everybody.
We all looked up as the yacht appeared with the heavy thrum of AG boosters. It swung as close as it could without brushing the spindles and extended an umbilical for us to travel up. The yacht had an open-deck plan, kitted out like a pleasure cruiser but with a former military frame. I could see where the guns had once been mounted in the prow, and I wondered what the ship’s core AI thought of its new role in life, assuming they’d left the AI intact when it was repurposed, of course.
Once on board, we rose up about three hundred meters at a slow climb, the yacht pivoting itself gently to avoid all the spindles and cables that crisscrossed every open space. The Thraad disappeared below deck along with the Dryth and Tagrod himself. That left the feed-slaves and me, as well as a couple of the servo drones. One of them brought me a drink unbidden; I wasn’t so foolish as to drink it.
“He’ll have you first, you know.” One of the slaves said. It was the first time she had spoken since I’d laid eyes on her. She was fat, probably middle-aged, but with larger breasts and darker eyes than ‘Tal’. Her mane was well kept and silver in color, which I knew to be a genetic rarity in the Lhassa genome.
I gave her a blank stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “I know what you’re up to. His stable’s full. If you think you’re buying yourself a few more years of life by offering yourself to him, you’re wrong. He’ll have you inside a week.”
“Conza!” One of the other feed slaves—younger, prettier—flicked her tail and gave the older slave a withering glance. “Leave her alone!”
I tossed my mane at Conza. “Well, I don’t plan on being eaten.”
“As if it’s up to you!” She snorted. “I know his tastes as well as anybody. I’ve been his slave for almost a full cycle.”
I laughed. “You must not taste very good.” I looked at the other two slaves. They were both watching our exchange carefully, but neither reacted to my little quip. The one who had spoken up for me hugged herself, though not against any external chill—the canyons of Sadura were hot as jungles and just as humid.
“Shut your mouth about things you know nothing about.” Conza snarled.
I smiled. “Same to you.”
The two Dryth returned to the deck. Othrick had a hand scanner, while the other one had his hand on his pistol. Behind them, strutting along on his rear four legs with all the cockiness of a bird doing a mating dance was Tagrod the Balthest. He had shed his clothing, and now moved towards me slowly, his eyes shining. “Just a formality, Tal. I’m afraid Othrick insisted.”
It took Othrick less than a second to find the multipistol. Dryth faces are poorly suited to smiling, but there was a tightness in his eyes and nostrils that indicated some degree of vindication. He seized the pistol and held it up for his Lorca master. The other Dryth drew his weapon and leveled it at me. “An assassin, sir.” Othrick announced. “As I suspected.”
Tagrod frowned at the tiny weapon. He shook his head. “Ah, Tal, I thought you were different.” Tagrod shook his great head.
Othrick tossed my pistol over the side and then grabbed me by the collar. It’s easy sometimes to forget how much muscle is crammed into a Dryth’s compact frame until they lay a hand on you. Othrick dragged me over to the edge of the yacht and probably would have pitched me over with little trouble, had not Tagrod stopped him. “I want to know why.”
I smiled. “The usual reasons. You’re a great, smelly murderous beast with pretentions of civility. It’s almost sad if it weren’t so barbaric.”
Tagrod grinned, but showed his teeth this time. They glittered in the dim light of Sadura’s bioluminescent fungi. “The Lorca are no different than the Lhassa, Tal. We both feed on one another and on those around us, as does everything. The Lhassa have never understood this, which is why they consume whole planets with the ravenous appetites of their many young. We Lorca—we true Lorca—eat you to thin the herd, which benefits all.”
“Except the meals.” I tested Othrick’s grip by struggling a little, but he held me with geological firmness. Without bones, I had no way of leveraging an escape.
Tagrod waved Othrick away from the rail. “You care so deeply for my slaves, but so do I. This may be difficult for you to understand, but I love them. When, at last, I consume them, it will not be a barbaric act. It will be the course of nature—the way of the world. There is beauty in it.”
“Bull shit.” I wished right then I could have spat at him, but I’m not much good at it. All that nonsense about the beauty of nature made me ill. I wanted to grab him by his fat head and make him watch the little kids falling off the cliffs of Sadura. I wanted him to smell the dumpster I slept in as a child, slowly eking out nutrients from the festering remains of long-dead vermin. Screw him and his natural order. The civilized species of the galaxy had conquered it for a reason.
I let this show on my face. Tagrod watched me with the intensity a predator can only muster for prey. “I see you disagree. Come. Let me show you.”
Othrick muscled me close to the big Lorca. I pushed my face into a sneer. “Careful—I might disagree with you.”
The Lorca’s middle limbs reached out and seized me by the legs and waist as easily as if I were a candlestick. “Understand, pretty Tal, that it is you who have made this come about. I wish…” He lost the words and shook his head.
“Just do it already. I’m getting tired of talking to you.”
Tagrod sighed. “I do this out of honor, not pleasure.”
His giant, gaping mouth snapped down over my head faster than I thought possible. The pressure was incredible—were I the real Tal, my skull would have been crushed and my spine snapped in and instant. As it was, I compressed in his mouth like a half-full balloon. I felt the dozens if needle-sharp teeth pierce my outer membranes, each puncture burning with intense pain and weight. I let myself flow around his jaws and pulled myself up and into his mouth as quickly as I could, abandoning my Lhassa form with all the speed and alacrity of deeply-ingrained muscle memory. The great Lorca immediately knew something was wrong. His forelimbs clawed at my amorphous body, but most of me was in his mouth, filling his jaws and throat like a tumor. With a simple internal jerk, I expelled the metabolic poison down his gullet—the poison that the pistol had diverted his guards away from finding.
Tagrod threw himself on his side, still clawing at his own face, but by now the poison was hitting his system. After the fires of adrenaline cooled, his motions became sluggish, erratic, uncoordinated. The Dryth were on top of their master, trying to pry me out. When they were close enough, I let some of myself flow into a pseudopod that pulled Othrick’s pistol from his holster. My aim has never been good, but at that range it didn’t need to be. I set the pistol to shoot slivers and unloaded a burst into Othrick’s forehead and another into the other one’s face. They dropped like the eighty-kilo sacks of meat they were.
When it was all over, I flowed out of Tagrod’s throat and formed myself into Tal again. I saw the big Lorca’s eyes were still open, one eyelid twitching sporadically. I gasped for air and did my best to seal the dozens of little puncture wounds that leaked from my body. Everything hurt. “Dammit, that took a long time.”
“You monster!” Conza darted to her
master’s side. “What have you done? You’ve doomed us! You’ve doomed our families!” Her eyes were glassy with tears, “He was generous to me! My children…what will they do?”
I didn’t bother trying to shrug—I was too tired. “I dunno—get jobs?” I checked Othrick’s pistol. Like all Dryth weapons, it was high quality, but needlessly ornate. I weighed the advantages of keeping it with the advantages of pawning it.
“Of course you wouldn’t care, you miserable smack!” Conza spat at me. “What does a pointless, disgusting trash-eating blob know about honor and decorum and…and decency?”
“I gotta admit, lady, not a hell of a lot.” I pointed the multipistol at her, considered shooting her. Before I could make up her mind, she screamed and darted below deck. I could hear her yowling as it shuddered up through the deckplates.
The other two said nothing, still clinging to one another, keeping their distance. “Which one of you is Yvret?”
The youngest one raised her hand. I nodded. “Your Uncle Jainar sends his regards and his love.”
A tear welled in the mare’s eye. “He…he hired you?”
I shrugged. “Guess I was cheaper than the cost to buy you back from the Lorca.” I produced a piece of paper in my hand. “Here is the comms address at which you can reach your uncle. Contact him using the comm on this yacht.”
She stood there, staring at me. “Now?”
“I don’t get paid until you do, so do it now, yes.”
Yvret vanished. This left me alone with the third feed slave—the one who had stood up for me a few minutes earlier. I had seen, though, how she looked at my cousin in the trash bin; she looked at me no differently now. I was some horrible abomination, no matter how I’d saved her. “He treated us well. He was generous to our families.” She said at last. “Conza hadn’t lied about that. I…I think he actually cared for us.”
I spun my Lhassa neck around in an impossible circle, just to creep her out. It worked—she backed away a pace. “I really don’t care. He could have been the long-lost love of your life, saving your pups and atmospherically reconditioning a moon just for all the orphans of Lorcan appetite and I still would have killed him. I don’t owe you miserable bipeds anything. If the Thraad below decks spots me a fiver and I’ll put holes in you, too.”