Skeen's Search

by Clayton, Jo;

  Zelzony looked down at her, began laughing. “Ayy, Zo. Ayy, Zo.” She sobered. “I suppose I shouldn’t laugh, it won’t be very funny what’s going to happen there.”

  “I know. Borrentye’s apprentice Singlow is working on ways of easing the pain. Zeli …”

  “You want me to go with them.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “What good would it do having me there? They’d scrag me with the rest and sell us all. If that’s their plan. One middle-aged Min ignorant about everything past the Veils, I’d be worth a handful of spit against their weapons and their guile.”

  “At least I’d know. If they sell you, being you, if you’re alive, I count on you getting back here. With a starship, too. Then we’d figure how to deal with them and get our folk back.”

  “Saa, Zo, you don’t expect much.”

  “Saa, Zeli, I know you.”

  “Am I flattered? No. Only a fool. I’ll go.”

  “They know a lot we don’t, our aliens, but they don’t know organics like we do. You’ll go equipped with our best, Zeli, and you’ll bring back a lot more than reassurance for an aging lover. I’m convinced of this, my Zeli, what Lipitero told me is no sly trick, but the truth. That doesn’t mean we have to be quite that candid, yes?” She reached up her hand, smiled with pleasure as Zelzony took it and held it tight for a moment. “You’re to be careful, my Zeli, you’re to come back quickly. These are yeasty years ahead of us, my love, I need a shoulder to hold me steady.” She freed her hand. “Pour yourself some wine and bring me a glass. What have you found out about the newest deaths?”

  Zelzony took the stopper from the decanter; her hand shook a little and the glass stopper rang musically against the neck of the container. “Two of the missing have been found. A ravine in the Leposare Reserve.” She concentrated on filling the glasses, set the decanter down with slow care; it nearly slipped from her fingers, she had to snatch at it, then bend to retrieve the stopper she’d knocked onto a floor cushion. “I shan’t want to eat for a week. The second was just a cub, Zo, her flightskins soft with new down. Violated.” She stammered over the word, got hold of herself and carried Zuistro’s glass to her, went back and gulped down too big a mouthful of the wine, nearly choked on it. When she could speak again, she wiped her spattered fur, said, “Her heart was cut out. Part of her brain was gone. The other damage … if you need to see it, I have a record in the imager. Signs of a fire by the body. Which suggests some sort of ritual eating of the dead.”

  “A ravine?”

  “Yes. Not far from the Tekala River, no water in it now, snowmelt in the spring. There’s a high stone overhang so a fire wouldn’t be seen from above. They’re cautious, those horrors.” She shivered with rage, her eyes misting over so she couldn’t see, could just stand trembling and blind until the spasm passed. “Dry season,” she said finally. “Not a time many folk visit the Leposare. No one about to see them though they seem to have camped there several days. And no one to hear them. It must have got noisy at times.” She looked at the glass in her hand, set it on the table and walked to the edge of the patio. After a moment she folded her arms over her ribs, pulling her flightskins tight against her body.

  Zuistro grimaced, finished the wine. “How many have you found now that they haven’t bothered disguising as suicide? Yes. Nine. All of them pre-adult. How many killers this time?”

  “Three, might possibly be four.”

  “Anything at all to identify them?”

  “Scrapes on rock from boots or sandals, a few flakes of leather off a harness, no bigger than a shred of meat someone might get stuck between his teeth. Common grubber hide, nothing idiosyncratic about it. No way to connect it to anyone specific.” She gazed up at the blazing sky. “The Veils are brighter than usual.”

  “Are they?”

  “I’ve failed, you see. I’m floundering. I don’t know where to go from here. I’ve tried every way I can think of to penetrate this darkness. My people have pried like corpseworms into the lives of the victims. We’ve run those lives through the computers a hundred times. There are dozens of correlations, but nothing that means anything. They were all young and except for this last cub who wasn’t long off weaning, they were all well-grown, pre-adult, on the verge of committing themselves fulltime to their dutychoice. There could be sane reasons for choosing victims that age, no one would miss them for a month or more, tweeners are expected to flit about like that, their last freedom flights. Going off who knows where. No way to link them with anyone. Scattering like leaves before the wind. I think it must be chance. Those horrors come across a wingrider alone. Doesn’t have to be anyone special. Can be either male or female. Class doesn’t matter, though worker tweeners aren’t likely to have wings. The victims we’ve found have all belonged to the managerial or professional classes. These creatures must go hunting whenever the urge is on them; no lack of sport year-round, not for them, they just change their killing field.” She snapped her arm out, reaching toward nothing, her fingers starred. Her flightskins swayed, caught the light from the oil lamps, burnished silver shimmering over the surface of the down. The gesture meant nothing, it was only that she had to move, to dissipate some of the tension coiling in her. “Chance. The throw of the dice. How can I fight that, Zo? We’ve investigated friends, relatives, acquaintances, any connection we can think of, however remote. Sometimes there will be links between two or three, nothing nothing never anything linking all nine. We tried making patterns of killing sites, of dates, of Gurns and Gathers the victims started from. Nothing, Zo. Do you know how many killings we’ve had since we landed on Rallen? Not connected to the six-legs I mean. Fifty-seven. In almost as many millennia. Do you know how we caught the Killers? All but three turned themselves in, nearly paralyzed by their horror at what they’d done. Two were caught at their second attempt to kill, one was never caught, but stopped killing for some reason; no one then or since has ventured a guess as to why. I can’t think about this any more, Zo. I try, but my mind slips off somehow onto something else. It’s not real for me. I can’t believe it. I’ve seen the bodies, I know what’s been done to these children, but I can’t make it mean anything, Zo, I can’t visualize the Ykx who is capable of such things. When I try to concentrate, to force myself into thinking carefully, logically, into applying reason to this thing, I cannot do it. I have to come at it sideways now, but even that doesn’t work. After three years of struggle, I am no closer to finding those monsters that I was when I stood there in the Common Hall and blathered on about the malaise in the soul of Rallen. Give this to someone else, please. I have failed and I will continue to fail.”

  “Who, Zeli, who among your people would do better?”

  Zelzony jerked her arms in another impatient gesture, the silver sheen racing like spilled mercury across her fur. Zuistro couldn’t see her face because she kept her back turned, but she didn’t need to see it to know the pain of that failure. Her Zem-trallen crossed her arms, the skins pulled tight against her once again. “No one,” she said. “They are capable workers, all of them, good thorough investigators. Borrentye is a marvel at what he does; he squeezed time out from his other concerns to try his hand at the puzzle, but he gave it up some months ago. He said there was no point in him wasting his time any longer. Besides things were getting a bit difficult in Marrallat, some of his agents were disappearing and he didn’t like the rumors he was hearing about what happened to them. And no, he didn’t think that had anything to do with this other thing. Just ordinary political disappearances, Sulleggen dropping her adversaries down a hole somewhere; he doesn’t think they are dead, no, just suppressed until Sulleggen can think of some way to cancel out what they learned.” She started prowling about the patio, picking up worry stones, running her thumbs over them, setting them down again, touching the decanter but leaving the stopper in place, picking up glasses, running her fingers down the stems, setting them down with exaggerated care. She stopped by Zuistro’s feet, stood gazing down at the Kinr
avaly. “Odd. People know what’s happening. We haven’t tried keeping the deaths a secret. Or suppressing how they died. They know, but no one talks about it. Worker, artisan, manager, trader, justicer, professional, they all refuse to think about this thing. The tweeners flutter about as freely as always on wing and skins as if nothing has happened. As if we all, and I’m in it too, my love, as much as any, as if we all can’t absorb what’s happening.”

  “Rallykx, ah, the Rallykx,” the Kinravaly said. “They can whip up some twisty tricks. Hmm. When the copper vanished from the Narassen Gather’s storehouse, what did you do to find out how the thief did the impossible?” She smiled affectionately at Zelzony. “Thinking sideways, my love. You went through orzala records and found yourself that thoroughly reprehensible old thief Tokalle who had fallen victim to the age of his body, not his mind and you saw he got two years taken off his reparations when he told you how he thought the thief had done it and once you knew how, you knew who. And Narassen got its copper back.”

  Zelzony threw herself into a chair, sat with legs splayed out before her, hands clutching at the arms. “Thieving, yes. But Zo, we’ve got no expert practitioners at murder for me to consult.”

  “Perhaps we have.”

  “What?

  “Everything Rostico Burn said about Beyond the Veil tells us it’s a violent place. Lipitero confirms that. No, I don’t suggest that you ask her for help. She might live in the midst of violence, but Mistommerk Ykx are still Ykx. Think about Skeen. Grave robber. Smuggler. Thief. Remember what Lipitero told us about her and the way she lives. It’s likely she knows quite’a bit about killers and how they’re hunted, though she’s not a killer herself. Lipitero likes her, there’s no misreading her feeling for the alien. She approves of her, she told me the woman is tough, perhaps and a bit crazy, but you can trust her if she gives her word. I will be talking with her tomorrow morning, I could make helping you a part of our bargaining.”

  Zelzony twisted around to frown at Zuistro. “She’s the kind I’d be chasing if she were Ykx. Isn’t this getting ourselves too deeply involved with her? Besides, how much can she know about lawful hunting?”

  “How much did Tokalle know about thief-catching?”

  With a flurry of elbows and knees, Zelzony jumped to her feet and trotted to the edge of the patio. For several minutes she stood there staring into the darkness. Then she shivered, the light dancing seductively along her lean body, over the graceful fall and fold of her flightskins. She turned her head, looking over her shoulder at the Kinravaly. “I was hoping …”

  “That I would take this burden from you?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  “Ask Bohalendas how kind a Kinravaly can be. Ask Lah and Lih.”

  Zelzony dropped beside the chair and began smoothing her fingers along the solid muscle in the Kinravaly’s leg. Down along the dark golden fur, the paler gold shimmering with buttery lights, up to the knee, down again to the long toes. “Kindness. If fate is kind, the monsters will take fright and volunteer to be colonists.”

  Zuistro was silent for some minutes, her breath roughening as she responded to Zelzony’s touch. Finally, she said, “No, my dearest, I think they’d be the last to leave. I think they are terrified that they’ve lost themselves and everything important. I think they need control, order. I think they loathe change, they want everything eternally the same so they won’t feel inadequate or afraid. When they do these things that sicken you, and me, however calmly I talk about this, Zeli, I feel like screaming and cursing, but neither helps much, does it? No, not even to ease my horror … where was I, yes, when they catch a flier in their nets, they have power in their hands, power over life and death, pain and not-pain. I can hear them laughing when they force their victims to do this and that like training a grubber to plow. The laughter of complicity, of total control, master and mastered. These days, my love, you can see change happening. Yeasty times. I’ve said that a lot, that doesn’t make it less true. A time when workers are filled with the hope of escaping their drudgery, a time when managers find their positions and honors precarious. Especially the honors. You and I, my Zem-trallen, have never cared much for the formalities of our offices, but if we wanted, we could put on such parades of pomp the dead would stare. I am locked into this role by far more than the pleasures of power, but you, my love, you could walk away from your office tomorrow and all you’d miss would be the work. Do you think Sulleggen could stop being Kinra the same way? Do you think she doesn’t know that if you stripped away her honors you’d leave her a naked worm? And she at least has some talents to cushion her fall. What about Uratesto? He’s a figurehead for the Consortium that really runs Urolol. What would he be without his official harness? Too much change will kill them, Zeli, that’s why they are fighting you and Borrentye with every wind they can raise. They’ll not allow Lipitero in their Gurns and they won’t let their folk out to hear her. And they are right, my love. She is the match that will set off the explosion they’ve contrived to create under them. Though maybe I’m wrong about Sulleggen, maybe she will see this as a chance to drain off the most dangerous of her malcontents. Where was I, yes, I don’t say your monsters are Sulleggen or Uratesto, I think that’s unlikely, but I’d say look for similar types among the less successful of our managers.” She sighed with pleasure as Zelzony continued stroking her fur. “I will arrange a meeting between you and Skeen tomorrow afternoon, ahhh, do you know how marvelous that feels, mmmm? A minute and I’ll return the favor; if the woman agrees to help you, see if you can get her to give us star charts from Beyond the Veil. Ahhh.…”

  “How many?”

  “Nine in the past two years.”

  Skeen was startled into laughter then had to apologize. “Etjillos on Tor where I grew up, well, nine dead in a night would be a night unusually calm. My uncle’s house was a few streets over from the Menagerie, um, that was where the dross of Etjillos was dumped, I would see the dead vans clanking past after the meatmen collected the corpses off the streets. They used to bet on how many they’d find, the meatmen I mean, no one who knew the place would put his money on nine. More often it was twenty or thirty; one night they pulled out seventy-three.”

  Zelzony shook herself, tried to comprehend what seemed to her an impossible anarchy. “Dead left in the streets? Their families …”

  Skeen shrugged. “What families? Besides, if you stuck your head up to claim a body with half a hundred stabs in it, you’d probably be hauled in by the traiches and thumped until you confessed killing him. The local archon generally paid the meatmen a copper or two per corpse, ground these up and sold the result to the local farmers to use as fertilizer or kebir food. If someone important, especially a Citizen, went slumming and got himself offed, the Imperials came stomping in, rounded up whoever they could get their hands on, turned their brains to mush with hard probes; since they didn’t bother asking the right questions, they almost never learned anything important; after that, they lined the leavings against a handy wall, shot them and fed them into the fertilizer mills. They never bothered hunting down whoever really did the job, the object of the exercise was to convince the locals they shouldn’t lay a finger on a slummer no matter what he did to them.”

  Zelzony stared at her, shivered. “I can’t see how you could live like that.”

  “Nice to have a choice.”

  “Forgive me, fer Skeen, consider it ignorance speaking. Then you don’t have any suggestions for me beyond what I’ve already done.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I’m no good. But it’s not me you should be talking to, it’s Picarefy. Come out to Workhorse with me. Uh, the ship.”

  “Picarefy?” She followed Skeen across the grass. “Another member of your crew?”

  “No. The ship. Not this one. The starship up there.” She waved a long arm at a sky thick with dark clouds threatening rain.

  “What?”

  “Oh, you have a treat ahead of you, my friend. My Picarefy is something else, though don
’t tell her I said so. She’s already too conceited.”

  The lift carried them smoothly to the airlock. Zelzony followed the tall, thin alien inside. Even the round surfaces in this thing seemed harsher, more rigid than the plastics, plants and cultures she was accustomed to considering technology. There was an odd cool smell around her that wasn’t unpleasant, just unfamiliar. It seemed to Zelzony to hold some essence of the alien and her way of life.

  Zelzony settled in the padded chair that was almost as comfortable for her as it was for the alien; she watched with a twinge of envy and desire as Skeen’s long, rather bony fingers moved with swift assurance over the console.

  A face bloomed in the oversize screen.

  “Eh, Tibo,” Skeen said, then said more in a rapid patter of words that Zelzony couldn’t follow. She was startled by how frustrated this made her feel; she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with strange tongues, even the few dialects that had developed in the more widely separated Gurns were quickly comprehensible to one who took a moment’s thought and listened carefully. Ykx were conservative by nature, literate, and no group had ever been totally cut off from another so any changes in the language made their way swiftly around Rallen. She had a sudden vision of herself lost in a sea of meaningless sounds and it frightened her more than anything, even these murderous cretins she was trying to locate and the fear that they were a portent of Rallen’s future. In a moment of panic she wanted to run from the place and tell the Kinravaly she hadn’t the courage to leave Rallen and plunge into that kind of uncertainty.

  The alien in the screen grinned suddenly and stopped talking. Another voice came through the speakers, using Rallyx smoothly with a subtle blend of accents. “How goes the bargaining, oh, Partner and Friend? Please may I send you these ants in my belly? Tibo and Rostico Burn aren’t meant to be soulmates.”