by Clayton, Jo;
EARLY BIRD BOOKS
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Skeen’s Search
Jo Clayton
SKEEN—THE EARLY DAYS
Abandoned on Kildun Aalda in the city Chukunsa (she doesn’t know why but suspects her companion Tibo ran off with her ship), running low on credit, Skeen sneaks out of the city looking for a hidden ruin she can plunder and thus buy her way off Aalda so she can go after Tibo and roast him over a slow fire. The Honjiukum who control access to such ruins set a saayungka pack after her and chase her into a dry-bones valley. She is captured by a force that draws her into a doorway that turns out to be a Gate into another Universe.
While exploring the new world she lands on (Mistommerk), Skeen is drawn into a conflict between two shape-shifting Min (natives of Mistommerk), twin sisters called Telka and Timka, then discovers that the Gate has closed on her and she can’t get back to Kildun Aalda with the loot she has gathered. Timka suggests she seek out the Ykx who were the original makers of the Gate and presumably knew how to work it.
Pursued by Telka and later by vengeful Chalarosh assassins, collecting an assortment of companions (a Balayar Scholar, four Aggitj exiles, a Skirrik youth intent on winning his wedding jet, a Chalarosh boy who’s the last of his clan, the others have been wiped out in a feud), Skeen and Timka search for the last Gather of Ykx on Mistommerk. During the journey Skeen discovers a connection between the Ykx of Mistommerk and Rallen, a world populated by Ykx in her own universe. The Ykx are dying out on Mistommerk. They need new blood to keep existing here. Skeen uses this knowledge to buy their help opening the Stranger’s Gate.
SKEEN—THE SAGA CONTINUES
Down to a handful of silver, Skeen and company (a new member in it, an Ykx called Lipitero), leave Lake Sydo and go downriver to a city called Cida Fennakin. While they wait there for a ship’s Captain (and owner), Maggí Solitaire, they earn their living in various ways while Skeen hunts for someone local and unloved to burgle for traveling funds. The owner of the Inn (the Funor Ashon outcast Angelsin Yagan) where they were staying got ambitious and tries to sell them to a number of groups (Telka and her fanatics, Chalarosh assassins, Fennakin Funor slavers) interested in them, drugs them, throws them into dungeon cells while she negotiates for the price she wants. They escape, hold Angelsin prisoner until Maggí Solitaire arrives. Everyone but Skeen, Timka and one of the Aggitj exiles, Domi, sails with Maggí; they stay behind to get the coin to pay passage for the company.
In the house of Nochsyon Tod the slaver, Skeen is attacked by guard dogs, one hand badly torn; she manages to put darts in them and gets away with the loot. After some more difficulties she and Timka reach the small boat Domi has acquired with them and take off downriver after Maggí. The bitewound throws Skeen into a deep fever; even after they reach Maggí’s ship she does not respond to care and what medicines Maggí has. Skeen sinks deeper and deeper and comes close to dying. Pegwai the Balayar Scholar and Timka get together and agree they have to cut the hand off. They use Skeen’s laser cutter, sear the wound; that works well enough to bring Skeen back to consciousness and she uses her own antibiotics to suppress the infections, recovers quickly and begins the process of learning to live one-handed.
They run across Chalarosh seeking to kill the Boy, Sea Min after their hides, especially that of Timka, angry Nagamar in coastal swamps, members of the Company peeling off to tend their own affairs until only Skeen, Timka and Lipitero are left. They continue moving toward the Gate, finally coming against Telka and her small army of followers who are waiting in ambush for them as they reach the Mountains and near the Stranger’s Gate. Lipitero the Ykx looses the Ever-Hunger on the Min army, opens the Gate. They elude the Min, the Ever-Hunger and jump the Gate. Telka is waiting there, attacks Timka (both are in the shapes of big cats, nearly identical big cats), Skeen darts both of them. When she looks closer, she knows Timka; with Lipitero’s help she tosses the other cat back through the Gate and Lipitero closes it down. Tibo is waiting there; he took Skeen’s ship off to protect it from Abel Cidder who was nosing around, came back to Kildun Aalda to pick up Skeen and has been hunting for her since. The four of them (Skeen, Tibo, Timka and Lipitero) slip back into Chukunsa and off the world, on their way to find Rallen and persuade Rallen Ykx to follow Lipitero back through the Gate.
SO. WHERE ARE WE NOW? BETWEEN THIS BOOK AND THE LAST, SKEEN HAS SPENT A MONTH AT A TANK FARM REGROWING HER HAND AND HAVING THE LAST OF HER CREDIT REMOVED WITH SURGICAL PRECISION. TIBO HAS BEEN BORROWING AGAINST FUTURE PROFITS AND OLD FAVORS, SCOOTING ABOUT HERE AND THERE CHECKING WITH HIS SOURCES FOR INFORMATION ABOUT RALLEN AND ABEL CIDDER. TIMKA HAS NESTED INTO ONE OF PICAREFY’S SLEEP TEACHING PODS AND HAS BEEN PLOWING THROUGH INFORMATION SUMMARIES ABOUT THIS UNIVERSE SHE’S LANDED IN HALF-UNWILLING, TRYING TO CONVINCE HERSELF SHE CAN LEARN TO LIKE IT. LIPITERO AND PICAREFY HAVE BEEN ENGAGED IN INTENSE DIALOG, THE YKX HAS JUST ABOUT MOVED INTO THE SHIP’S WORKSHOP AND HAS BEEN CREATING ITEMS FOR PICAREFY’S PLEASURE AND HER OWN, SOMETHING TO PASS THE TIME WHILE THEY WAIT FOR SKEEN. IF YOU NEED REMINDING ABOUT EVENTS IN PREVIOUS BOOKS, WELL, TURN BACK A FEW PAGES AND READ THE UPDATE, THE REST OF YOU FEEL FREE TO DIVE RIGHT IN.
PART I: THE SEARCH
SCENE: THE BUZZARD’S ROOST, SUNDARI PIT.
A long oval room filled with tables, glass cases, crates, bales, alcoves with viewscreens and reasonably comfortable chairs (several not made for bipeds’ behinds); shelves cover most wallspace, gaps where things have been taken away, otherwise a chaotic collection of small items. The room is cluttered, dusty to a reasonable degree, but gives an overall impression of richness, variety, the excitement of maybe-treasures. It is a very good room to be in.
SKEEN ENTERS.
She is followed by a small stubby ’bot carrying the things she is here to sell or put out on consignment.
Skeen picked her way through the clutter on the floor to the small cleared space tucked into one end of the oval, shielded from view by some ceiling high shelves, the ’bot whirring frustration behind her as it rose on extensible braces and drew its wheels into a tighter configuration, balancing precariously as it turned and twisted along the narrow paths between boxes, bales, and piles of miscellaneous debris. She rounded a set of rickety shelves, stopped and stood, hands clasped behind her, watching the solid old man probing at a crusted object with an antique steel tooth scraper. He was a big man with broad, blunt-fingered hands that should have been clumsy but weren’t. “Ta, Buzzard,” she said.
He looked up, made a sucking sound, tongue against teeth. “So so,” he said, a wheeze in his voice. An instant decrepitude slicked over him as he got ready for hard bargaining. “Back already?”
“Dropping by. Got a few things you might find interesting.”
He set the conglomerate aside, tucked the scraper into his shirt pocket. “So so, what you got?”
Skeen snapped her fingers. The ’bot whirred past her, stopped beside the desk, opened and extended his topknot pack into a long thin display shelf, with the contents tucked into transparent boxes, visible but temporarily untouchable. “Nothing very old, but interesting, that you’ll give me once you see this collection.” She clicked open a box, took out a heavy gold chain, solid links alternating with open circles set with odd dull gems; spreading it on the desk before him, she said, “Take a close look at the chasing. Hasn’t been any work like that since the Nagamar worlds were ashed. You know I prefer to provide onsite fots and anecdotal background, but that’s not possible this time; you can name me as source for whatever that’s worth, but my name’s the only documentation you’ll get … um … I can say this, I’ve found a tiny remnant of Nagamar still alive.” She grinned at him. “And a co
uple other remnants. Pallah and Skirrik.” After running a soft cloth over them, she set the Poet’s swords down beside the chain. “These items are for sale outright.” ’She began setting out the bijouterie and bric-a-brac she’d picked up with the swords and slid smoothly into the cross talk of bargaining.
Skeen settled into the chair the Buzzard summoned for her and sighed. “You’re a hard man, Buzzard.”
He looked up from the film he was wrapping about a sword, grunted and went back to twisting the film tight. “Hot air and foolishness,” he said. “You screwed your price out of me, no pity for a poor old man trying to make a meager living.” Eyes the color of dried blood laughed at her. “What else you got?”
Skeen brought out the lumpy objects from Coraish Gather, set them on the desk.
“So so. Rallen work. Now where did you get that, shtoshi-mi?” He took up the lump, let it warm in his hands. The dun blob changed; opaline colors glowed and flowed along the mutating forms, primarily green and gold with flickers and sudden flares of purple and crimson, no configuration of shape and color ever exactly repeated the whole time he held the blob. He clicked tongue against teeth. “Consignment, percentage for me?” When she nodded, he relaxed. “A wonder,” he said, “much better than its mates you saw here a while back.”
“Not Rallen work.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Another remnant? Rumor says you went to Kildun Aalda, looking for a way to take on the Junks.” He set the change work down; it began to fade and after a few minutes was once more imitating a squashed dun turd. “You have a source?”
“Buzzard, now I ask you, am I going to tell you or anyone?”
“Hmm. Are you?”
“Hard. Hard. Adamantine man. Look at this first.” She began spreading the Min jewelry across the desk, putting the sweetamber pieces together in one corner. “You’ve never seen any work exactly like these or heard of it.” She lifted one of the larger pieces of sweetamber. “Warm this in your hand, no, it’s not going to shift shape, hold it awhile then take a sniff.” She watched his face, laughed when his eyes snapped open and his breathing turned ragged. “Doesn’t matter the species, as long as they have a minimum body warmth and live in an oxygen atmosphere, you get an effect. I’ve been told it’s different for different species.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. Where I got it everyone seemed to prize the stuff.”
“Where you got it?”
“I can just about guarantee these items are uniques. Nothing like them coming in from anywhere anyone can get to, nothing about to pop up either, in any market, not for the current century anyway. You can offer them as uniques and be ninety-nine point nine percent et cetera sure that assertion won’t come back to haunt you.”
“Playing games, Skeen.”
“Sure. Why not. It’s all a game, isn’t it, one you enjoy more than most.”
“This collection, anything to do with Rallen?”
“Nothing.”
He raised scraggly brows, the freckles on his forehead diving into heavy wrinkles. “Hot?”
“Cold as Winter on the Far Side. Mostly a fee for honest labor. Don’t be like that, it’s true enough. The rest, well, the previous owners hadn’t a hope in hell of coming after it.”
He began gathering up the jewelry and replacing it in its boxes. “Uniques. Hmmm. Going to take some doing, getting the word out. I don’t know if I want to tie myself up like that. No, not for less than a quarter. Years, Skeen, going to take years out of my life and that’s the truth. This kind of thing isn’t bargain counter, you know. Can’t possibly take it on for less than a quarter share. My overhead is something fierce, keeps me running in place just to have a roof over my head. Got other business you know, the only way it’s worthwhile for me to handle these, I’ll have to arrange an auction. You got any idea what it’s going to take to get folk together who can afford to bid on these?” He went on with the gentle flow of words as he worked to extract the largest commission he could tease out of her. His hands caressed the delicate pieces, his eyes flickered from the amber to the change sculpture to the polished woods set in filigree of gold, silver and translucent opalescent shell, moving over them as lovingly as his stubby fingers, though he tried to control his appreciation since his desire for them gave Skeen an edge in the game. Skeen settled finally at eight percent of purchase price. Buzzard sat back and sighed with satisfaction. “I know five who’ll bid against each other till they drop.”
Skeen snapped her fingers. The ’bot folded itself together, hiked itself up and rolled away. She got to her feet, watched until it reached the Roost’s exit and squatted there to wait for her. In her chair again, she stroked a forefinger along the crease beside her mouth. “Like to earn another percent?”
“So so. That’s quite a fee. For what?”
“Rallen. Tell me who sold you that Rallen ware.”
“Aaah.” He rocked in his chair, fingers tapping a shapeless tune on the arms. Then he nodded. “Fair enough. Tall, skinny, dark boy. If he swallowed a raisin, it’d show. Hadn’t seen him before, but he was no novice. He knew pretty well what the stuff was worth and kept chipping at me until he got something near his price. He gave in a hair too soon, he was still that raw then, wouldn’t do it these days.” He stared at the stained ceiling a moment, brought his head up. “Rostico Burn,” he said. “Rumor runs he came out of the Cluster with Imperials on his tail. Not unlike another skinny kid I knew some half a hundred years ago.”
“Any idea where I can find him?”
“I can ask around. You want me to do that?”
“Be quiet about it.”
“Skeen, you know the low road. Word is already out you’re interested in Rallen. Tibo was busy while you were getting that hand regrown. Been half a hundred rumors zipping about since he asked the first question.”
“Cidder?”
“I don’t talk to the man. None of my folk are on his payroll, I make sure of that. But he’s got noses everywhere else. The minute I move on Rostico Burn, he’ll know it. Tie it up with Rallen and go after the boy himself. He’s really hot to get his hands on you, haul you back to the Cluster. You’ve rubbed his nose in it a time or two too often, Skeen. One of these days he might even risk going after you inside a Pit. Why do you keep fishing in the Cluster? Plenty of other places for Roon raids. I tell you, when you scooped out the Imperial Museum and got off with the Undying’s favorite bits, shtoshi-mi, for a while there I was sure we were going to have Imperial marines scraping us down to bedrock. There were a lot of folk who stopped breathing until you let the Empire ransom its artifacts. There was even some talk of shunning you, but that went away when the fuss died down and the Pits could look back from peace and enjoy your twisting the Empire’s tail. I doubt you know how close you came. Hunh, I doubt you give a fist full a shit. You ought to, old girl. Next time you do something like that, you could find yourself without any friends left.”
Skeen shook her head. “I know. I know. But don’t you forget, I’m Cluster born and Empire bred. Every time I hit them and raise a welt, it’s like ice on a burn.”
“Ice … hmm … you can’t afford. Give it a rest.”
“I’ll think about it.”
SHOOTOUT ON STARLONG WAY. TAKE ONE LIBIDINOUS MALE PIMP WITH DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR AND A LONG RECORD OF KILLS, PUT TOGETHER WITH ONE DELICATE LOVELY SHAPESHIFTER WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING BUT ISN’T ABOUT TO GO BACK TO DEPENDING ON ANYONE. NOW. IS THAT EXCITEMENT? DON’T BLINK. YOU MIGHT MISS THE ACTION.
or
WELCOME TO THE PITS.
Timka strolled along a street that continually astonished her, linked tiles springy underfoot, matte black rectangles on a metal web, clean and sweet-smelling (that astonished her until she saw the tiny ’bots that scurried about like mice sucking up trash almost before it fluttered down, and the larger ’bots that trotted off with drunken sleepers, dead bodies and anything else too big for the mice), a black sky overhead with occasional flickers of the forcefield that kept
the air in and a glittering spray of stars. Moving around her on the street and gliding past her on the slidewalk in the middle of the street was a noisy eclectic mix of folk who seemed to share nothing but the air they breathed and sometimes not even that; she saw half a dozen tanks and atmosphere suits. She felt like a caged bird let out for the first time; some of her old fearfulness revived. It was a world where she didn’t know the rules beyond the little she got from Skeen and Tibo, and there was a lot they never thought to tell her because they were too immersed in living the life to be aware of what they were leaving out. She was uneasy, nervous, exhilarated and thrilling at the tumble of wonders about her.
On the trip from the Tank Farm, Skeen said: You’ll be cheated. Expect it till you learn the ropes. Don’t feel hurt or stupid, you’re just ignorant, a thing that’s easily cured. Unlike stupidity. It’s a game. You’ll see. Believe me, you’ve got advantages that will knock them out once you start playing. That crazy body of yours throws off drugs and poisons every time you shift, and I’d wager a tangler wouldn’t have a prayer at holding you. The only reason the darter got you was I could put them in you faster than you could shift. Don’t let anyone know that. It’s a weakness. Put your head to it and work out a way of compensating if you can. Um … lot of different weapons out there. Look, will you let me do some testing? We can set Tibo’s stunner on low and see what it does to you. And Timka said: I caught the edge of the stunner Petro used on Angelsin and nothing drastic happened. And Skeen said: Better you know for sure than be sorry and dead on a guess. Tibo’s stunner did nothing but slow her a little, even on its highest setting, her nerve arrangements were too different, though after a full minute at that setting she felt the interior tremble which warned of Chorinya, the uncontrolled shifting that could exhaust and kill a Min. And Skeen said: You’re fairly safe in a Pit Stop. The trouble is when you’re Pallah, you’re pretty much standard female mammalian biped and you look like a breath could blow you away. Too tempting. Other than working girls, the spread in the Pits is weighted to the male and some of those males have the idea that they’ve got the right to grab what they want when it’s got two legs and a cunt. And Timka said: Let them try, they’ll pull back a stump. And Skeen said: Well, a Pit’s a funny place, different ones have different rules. Make sure you know what the rules are before you do anything drastic. There are protection guilds in every Pit, you pay their fee, they give you a badge and if anyone bothers you, you yell for help and it comes. If it comes too late for your life, too bad for you and too bad for whoever attacked you; the badge transmits the stats of the attacker to the Guild computer and they go after him, eye for eye, tooth for tooth tenfold. If you’re robbed, they take ten times the amount out of the robber’s hide. If you’re raped and knocked about, they sell the man to the Tank Farms where he’s kept alive and used to provide spare parts to the Flesh Welders. If you’re dead, it’s an even exchange, his life for yours. That kind of thing. The only caveat is be sure you’re not the aggressor; in that case they return the fee and take their badge back, they’re not about to let some bloody-minded fool pull them into a feud. And Skeen said: When you want fast answers on rules and customs, find the nearest computer outlet, a one perc chip will get you a rundown.