Beholder's Eye

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Abruptly, without warning, it was within the image, a brilliant blue teardrop hurtling toward us. I couldn't believe Skalet had dared instruct the projector to represent the Enemy as that perfection—as us. She accused Ansky of breaking the First Rule? I thought with outrage. Beside me Ragem jumped. He knew that shape, if only as glimpses of my true self during cycling; here was confirmation, as if he needed it, of his worst fears about us.

  Then I wondered what it could matter. The Rigus' crew, the refugees on the convoy, the Articans, the Kraal—all had or would see the real thing now. Was it like this to them? I asked myself. Could they see how beautiful it was?

  Skalet's attention flashed downward; my stomach heaved in answer. Her timing was again impeccable: the hidden cruisers, led by the Septos Pa, were starting to rise up from the surface, accelerating every second. The detail on the image was so precise, I could make out the folded petal structures marking each of the trio of nightshades on the nearest cruiser, the latest and deadliest weapons the Kraal possessed.

  They were also Skalet's last choice, requiring as they did a massive recharging of energy after each firing. If the cruisers were reduced to the nightshades, they would lose much of their maneuvering speed.

  The image zeroed on the Decium Set. Despite whatever her captain may have thought of the nature of his target, Kraal discipline held firm. Following the plans set earlier, the Decium Set pulled closer to the planet, turning to train the Kraal cruiser's main weapons, electromag pulse cannons, on the approaching teardrop. Distances and trajectories were confused in this real time, false space image. Still, it looked to me as though the Rigus, following close behind our Enemy, would arrive dangerously within the path taken by any unspent projectiles were the Decium Set and its partner ship to fire anytime soon.

  Apparently Ragem shared my fear. He strained as far forward as the restraint field allowed, as if to put him somehow closer to being able to warn his ship and friends. Then the Rigus suddenly veered, rising up and away from the coming battle as if running for her life. She might have been.

  There was no time to feel relief. Our Enemy hadn't been distracted by the loss of its pursuer. Skalet had been right. It kept coming, aiming directly for the moon, following the drone's false directions to the letter.

  Mocktap sprung the trap.

  The three cruisers from the moon's surface surged upward: two, the Octos Ank and Hexian Ra, plugging the gap left between the Unnos Ra and Decium Set; the Septos Pa curling in behind to seal our Enemy against the side of the planet. In the imager, the enclosure looked textbook.

  Nothing ever worked that way, I warned myself.

  The first hint of a flaw in Skalet's trap came as four cruisers simultaneously fired their pulse cannons. The Kraal were experts. The targeting was coordinated between the ships, each positioned perfectly to avoid hitting each other, projectiles hammering outward in a blaze of energy, inertia dampers likely screaming within each ship as they compensated for the recoil. Skalet-memory provided me with a vivid recollection of the whir-thwump echoing in every part of the hull as the next rounds rolled down the barrels.

  The image representing our Enemy disappeared in a pool of violent light and debris. It reappeared an instant later, the image updated by the sensor feeding to the Trium Set from the Quartos Ank.

  Our Enemy had thinned itself to almost nothing, allowing the projectiles to pass through its mass, some colliding with each other. In the pause before the next, likely as ineffectual, rounds could be fired, it reformed itself, moving almost more quickly than the imager could relay towards the ship that hadn't fired yet, the Septos Pa.

  Skalet shouted orders. I heard Captain Longins voice replying. There was a boil of confusion on the bridge of the Trium Set.

  Meanwhile, the imager whirled closer to focus on the Septos Pa.

  Perhaps Admiral Mocktap made a calculated decision to sacrifice one of her own in order to stop what now seemed a more deadly foe than expected. A debate for military historians. All we knew was what the Quartos Ank's sensors passed to the imager.

  The nightshades of the Septos Pa unfurled, their hearts glowing green then red as the energy at their core built to climax. All three discharged in sequence, a snarl and a spit of white hot radiation the imager portrayed with artistically horrifying clarity.

  All three bolts missed their adroitly dodging target, carrying on unimpeded to peel open the hull of the hapless Octos Ank. At the same moment, without slowing, our Enemy careened straight into the Septos Pa, shown as a collision by the projector.

  Mercifully, Skalet hadn't programmed it to show how a web-being could eat its way through metal and plas.

  I reached for Ragem's hand, not needing the imager to tell me what was happening at that moment on the doomed Kraal cruiser, as our Enemy feasted.

  * * *

  Out There

  THIS was familiar. This was safe. This was—pleasure.

  Death prowled the corridors of the dying ship, feeding, renewing itself, searching.

  Here! Mixs-memory recognized the purpose of the bridge of the Septos Pa. Idly, Death tore apart the small shell around the nearest life-form, fastidiously discarding the molecules of what had been a battle suit as it consumed the living mass.

  Technology. Lesy-memory surfaced. Death cycled, shedding mass in a cloud of vapor…

  Becoming Kraal, becoming Human. Those still alive in the room shrieked in terror, discipline lost as they fought for the nonexistent safety of the lift.

  Death ignored them, using its new eyes to view the images before it, interpreting symbolic information.

  Ah. The one it truly sought, its feast, was there!

  Satisfaction.

  * * *

  49: Bridge Afternoon; Shuttle Afternoon

  « ^ »

  "GET out of here!"

  If I'd thought the bridge of the Trium Set was bustling with activity before, I'd been wrong. Skalet hadn't wasted a second. She'd ordered the Quartos Ank to relay a retreat order to the remaining Kraal ships, with a caution to the Rigus should it be still lurking in range.

  Now she was ordering the evacuation of her ship. Captain Longins looked as though he would argue, then closed his mouth, nodded once, and turned away. As he herded the crew ahead of him to the lift, I saw him fastening his suit.

  The lights were up, making it more difficult to see the images still displayed. The only one that mattered was blue, bright, and heading around the moon toward us. The Trium Set was starting to move, but I knew Skalet was right. We couldn't outrun it.

  I stayed to one side, Ragem a comforting silence nearby. Ersh knew what we thought we could accomplish, but neither of us left with the Kraal. Skalet, busy fussing over some controls or other, didn't seem to notice. I thought she might be setting a self-destruct, which really implied we should all be joining the more sensible members of the crew in the life pods.

  "There," she exclaimed bitterly. "That much done. Now." She looked over at us. "I thought you were leaving."

  "As are you," Ragem said firmly.

  Skalet's face crinkled in a smile, stretching her tattoos. "I begin to see what you find interesting in this one, 'tween," she commented. Her strong hands reached for us and somehow she was shoving us both toward the lift.

  The ship lurched. A hull breach klaxon began screaming. Skalet walked down to the main control consoles, found the right spot, and shut it off.

  "Well. This does cause problems." She looked at us both, I for one trembling so hard I couldn't think.

  Skalet, as usual, was never in that state. "Esen, I want you to go to Ersh." She paused and smiled again. "You and this Human of yours. Get to a life pod; The Kraal will pick you up. Just keep out of trouble, okay?"

  "What are you going to do?" I said, dreading the answer.

  "Fight. With a little help from you." With that, Skalet abandoned secrecy and caution, and broke the First Rule of our kind herself. She cycled in front of Ragem, not bothering to strip off the battle suit, rather abs
orbing its mass then excising the nonorganics.

  I understood. Beside me, I heard the Human's gasp. Ersh, let him accept this, I begged silently. It's what we are. And there's no other way. As Skalet formed her mouth, great ragged teeth ready, I cycled into web-form. Instantly I sensed the closeness of Our Enemy, its power and strength. And hunger! Skalet would need her full web-mass if she hoped to battle it. I shunted all I was, all I needed to survive, to my core and offered her what I could spare. I welcomed the slicing of her teeth through me—at least this was giving, not theft.

  She was done. And she was gone, ripping her way through the far bulkhead in the direction of the Other, ready to intercept it—if totally uncertain of stopping it.

  Dimly, I knew I had to cycle, to hide what I was, to flee. Something touched me. Without thinking I cycled into the only form I had left to me without assimilating mass. Thank Ersh, it had an ear.

  "Esen. Es. Are you all right? Can you hear me?" Hands touched me again, lifted. Despite the desperate urgency to escape, I felt a vast relief, as though a weight had shifted from me I hadn't known I'd carried. Ragem had just witnessed the Web at its most primal; seen us, me, as I truly was. And he accepted.

  "Yssss," I managed to hiss. "Run!"

  We ran. Behind us, a battle raged on and on, a battle without technology or strategy, its sole purpose survival.

  Somehow Ragem got us through the corridors. When breach doors cut off the most direct route to the life pods, he was the one to remember the way to the Trium Set's shuttle. Somehow he launched us into space.

  It was time to run home.

  Ersh!

  * * *

  50: Shuttle Night

  « ^ »

  I DON'T know why we didn't crash into the moon, run afoul of the Rigus or one of the Kraal ships, or simply become a drifting hulk far from the lanes. I wasn't in much of a state to care.

  The form I'd taken on the Trium Set, the only one I could use after giving over half my mass to Skalet, was that of a Quebit.

  I really hated being a Quebit.

  Still, I thought as I puttered with a loose fitting on the rear com panel, the Quebit mentality didn't allow one to panic, fear, or even speculate about the future. And I had lots to keep my appendages occupied. This shuttle was overdue for some fine maintenance.

  "Are you going to stay like this much longer, Es?" The Human had to go on one knee to talk to me. My Quebit-self was annoyed at the interruption in my work. I quelled it.

  "Need msssss," I admitted.

  "Mass," Ragem said quickly. "You need to increase your mass." He disappeared for a while and I gratefully went back to my repairs.

  "Here." He gently pulled the wrench from my upper appendage and offered me a tray piled high with various types of food.

  Obediently, I nibbled on some chocolate, a Quebit treat. "Not thisss mssss," I said when I was done, pushing the rest away. "Live msss."

  My senses were marvelously tuned to fine detail and observation, so I easily detected how Ragem's face went pale, then slowly grew determined. He stood and began working feverishly at the sling holding his arm to his side. I watched, quite intrigued. Was he feeling better?

  After the sling, off came the upper half of the space suit and the underlying shirt with a muttered expletive or two. "There. What could be easier?" he said, a funny undercurrent to the words as though he were talking more to himself than to me.

  Then Ragem sat on the shuttle's carpeted floor and held out his bare arm to me. "Mass."

  I extruded an extra pair of leg appendages and scurried under the nearest bench. "No msss! No msss!" I squealed in a most unQuebit-like display of near-hysteria. "No msss!"

  "Look, Esen," he said, still in that odd voice. "I'm not happy about this either. But I don't think you can stay as something so—small—for long. If you need… if I can help you, let me."

  "No msss." I hissed as firmly as possible, trying to hold my Quebit mentality on what mattered.

  The light coming under the bench was cut off by his shadow as Ragem crouched to the floor to continue his argument, one cheek pressed to the carpet so he could see me. "We don't know what's happening out here," he insisted desperately. "I need you, Es. I can't work the sensors on this thing. I don't know where to go. I'm afraid to contact the Rigus or the Kraal—who knows if that thing can pick up the signals? There's no time to be squeamish."

  Squeamish? I narrowed my vision field, magnifying my view until I could see the pores on his skin, the tiny bumps raised by the relative chill of the cabin—or reasonable fear of what he was proposing. I knew the makeup of his every cell and tissue. Perhaps, I thought, I could be surgical about this. Perhaps it would only cost Ragem an arm. Perhaps wasn't good enough. All I remembered said there was no such restraint when assimilating living mass. One took what the basic web-form demanded and thought about it later.

  "Plantssss," I hissed. After all, it was Skalet's shuttle.

  Light again as Ragem hurried away, just as glad as I was to find another option to explore. Meantime, I let my Quebit-self worry about the corner of the carpet under the bench, removing then reinserting the holding pins to stretch it properly.

  "Got some."

  I scuttled out at Ragem's relieved announcement. His arms were full of uprooted duras plants. Dear Human. I wouldn't need all of these; I hoped he'd left some in their pots. He placed his armload carefully on the floor by my feet, heedless of the dirt he shook over the carpet.

  I sat in the midst of the fleshy plants and cycled, spreading myself like a coating over the living things, moving into the fine network of channels within the dense structure awash with nutrients and water as they tried to survive uprooting. More of me, I coaxed, not fighting the sensation of dulling perception and intellect. I knew it would end. More. This was faster than consuming and assimilating, if difficult to endure. But I dared not stay in web-form too long so near my Enemy.

  The moment I restored myself to the proper mass I cycled, taking on the tried and trusted Ket form. I'd have preferred my birth shape, but we still had to travel and Ragem deserved an able partner, not one living head down in a 'fresher stall.

  "Es!" I endured the embrace—at least the Human avoided stepping on my toes—as long as I could.

  "Thank you, my friend," I said earnestly, tracing his smile with my fingertips. "I won't forget what you offered. Believe me."

  Keeping his good arm wrapped around me, as if Ragem needed the physical contact himself, he pulled me over to the shuttle's control panel. I pressed experimentally on the sensor display pad. Skalet-memory was accurate. A screen in front of us began a scroll of symbols, the lines moving from right to left and accompanied by Kraal script.

  "Ah, Paul-Human?" I began, dread crawling down my spine as I made sense of the information. "We're still beside the Trium Set. We aren't moving."

  "What!" he lunged for the pilot's seat, hands flashing over levers and dials. "It must need a code—"

  A perfect time for some Kraal excess in security measures, I thought with disgust. I snaked my long arm past him to key it in from Skalet-memory.

  The shuttle began peeling away from its mother ship. I kept reading the display, interpreting it aloud for Ragem in case he wasn't as well-versed in Kraal military symbolism. "The Quartos Ank is still in position. She's signaling on a broad band to the remaining cruisers to attack the Trium Set."

  And Skalet. I stared at the readout for her ship. There were no power signatures; it was apparently dead, recaptured by the moon's gravity, its orbit already decaying. The shuttle's sensors lacked the sensitivity to read any signs of life aboard, even if it could be reset to detect my kind.

  That the ship was this intact told me enough. Skalet had planned to destroy it. If she had failed, it could only mean our Enemy had forestalled her.

  And Skalet was dead.

  "Can we go any faster?" I asked Ragem numbly, watching helplessly as the Kraal ships streaked toward us from under the moon. The Enemy might already be free of th
e Trium Set and coming after us. Well, I thought, we have a variety of ways to die here.

  "I'll see what I can do," he promised, dropping into the pilot's chair and eyeing the controls. "Is there a particular course?"

  "Anyway away from here," I recommended. "The cruisers are seconds from line of sight on the Trium Set. I don't expect they'll delay in firing."

  The shuttle shook around us then steadied. "Fast as she'll go," he told me. "She's got translight, but we're too close to the moon to engage."

  The display gained a host of new symbols as we moved, changing the area swept by the sensors. "I'm picking up life pods," I said. "Try not to hit any."

  That surprised a chuckle out of him. "If you insist," he added.

  "They're firing!" I think I shouted that, the display redlining across its width as the energy signatures behind us rose into critical ranges. "Must be the nightshades."

  Odd how the display took such violence and tamed it. The symbol marking the Trium Set winked and was gone. No chandeliers. And no Skalet. The residual energies faded almost as quickly, some splashing down on the moon's surface to echo back as a fainter glow.

  "They've destroyed the ship." I told him. "You can go to translight in two minutes."

  "I'm sorry, Esen."

  "If they've killed it," I replied, lost my voice, then found it again. "If it's gone, Skalet would be satisfied." I closed my eyes for an instant, my hands fumbling against the bare skin of my chest. What else had I lost? Oh, yes, I thought, Ket-despair welling up, my hoobit.

  A cold ring of textured metal was pressed into my hands. I opened my eyes to stare down at the circlet Ragem had just given me, then looked back up at him.

  He touched one finger politely to the hoobit. "I don't know what made me grab it, Es."

  My hands trembled as I secured the leather loop around my neck and settled the hoobit properly. "This Ket is again grateful, Paul-Human," I said wearily.