Skeen's Search

by Clayton, Jo;

Skeen nodded. “Let me see if your quarters are in shape, then I’ll whistle up a remote who’ll ride you there. Want something to eat?”

  “Some tea would be nice. Hot and sweet. Mostly, I want to sleep for a year or two.”

  “Wouldn’t mind that myself.” Snort of laughter. “After a bath.”

  Ross standing beside him, Tibo was talking to Picarefy, assessing damage. He looked around as Skeen came toward him, wiping at her nose, rubbing the dried blood off her lip. “Shook all over, but still together. Like us all.”

  She nodded. “Pic, what about Ti’s cabin, it in shape so she can sack out for a while?”

  “I tucked the cabins up before this started. Yes, right, I’ve got it unbuttoned, she can go over whenever she’s ready.”

  “Good. She needs a remote, she can’t walk it yet. What about some tea?”

  Ripple of laughter. “Can I bribe you all with tea? Hit the shower-room. Please.”

  “On my way. Coming, Tib?”

  He slid from the chair, stretched, groaned. “Aaahhh, I feel like Cidder’s tiny feet have tromped all over me and him wearing spike heels.” He followed Skeen to the flow tube, put his hand on her back just above the swell of her buttocks. She leaned against him, sighed with pleasure at the warmth of his hand, reached behind him and brushed the sensor. They WENT to the shower-room, stepped inside.

  Tibo wrapped his arms around her, pulled her tight against him. “A good day to have behind us.” He chuckled. His breath was warm on her shoulder. “Cidder will be curling round the edges.”

  “Maybe he’ll spontaneously combust.”

  “Fortuna would never be that Bona for us, luv. Mmf, you’re my heart and all that, Skeen.…” He patted her buttock, moved away and began to strip.

  “We’re redlining it right now, Skeen. Twenty lights more and I’m running on empty.”

  “What’s available around here?”

  Starfield schematic, assorted symbols. Three green squares marking Pit Stops. A dozen yellow dots marking refueling stations dedicated to Company shiplines (they’d occasionally sell to transients if properly bribed). Nine red dots, scattered along the nearest edge of the Cluster, military depots.

  “We’d better avoid the Pits,” Tibo said. “And not just because we can’t afford the fees. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cidder was primed for sending a snatch team into a Pit after us if we went to ground in one. It’d make a lot of trouble for Cluster traders who use the Pits, but me, I think he’s hot enough to chance it.”

  Skeen nodded. “Wish I didn’t agree with you, but I do.” She scowled at the yellow dots. “Fuckin’ vultures.”

  Tibo leaned over the back of her chair, moved his fingertips in slow circles over her head, down her neck, along her shoulders and back. “Don’t matter, luv,” he said, “we won’t be buying fuel or fiends. Pick a target and we’ll jack him.”

  She sighed with pleasure as his hands continued to massage her. “You’re relaxing me so much, I’m going to sleep. Mmmm. The nearest is that one at Potheree. We don’t pass that way very often so we won’t be laying mines for our own feet. What do you think, Pic?”

  “It’s small, lax and most of all close.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  Hemallassar Harmon ran the fueling station at Potheree; that is to say, he was nominally in charge of its legitimate functions and personnel, answerable to the HomeOffice that owned the facility and the small airless world that housed it. Nominally in charge, because he paid almost no attention to those functions and personnel, spending most of his time on his hobbies and the collecting of credit sufficient to maintain them. He was a Gamesman whose dream was creating a living world in miniatures. He had genstructed miniature plants, piscians, crustaceans, assorted mammals (vast herds of prey beasts, finger-long tigers and other predators, bird species ranging from songbirds the size of mosquitoes to vultures with the wingspan as wide as his hand); after a century and a half of labor and vast expenditure he had an ecologically stable, self-reproducing world two kilometers wide under a dome just over the horizon from the station. Until now he’d played his games there with tiny androids, but these were expensive, always breaking down at tense moments, spoiling the scenario for Harmon, wrenching him out of his dream. And they didn’t bleed, die or feel real pain, only simulated these. Most unsatisfying. He was attempting to genstruct miniatures of the various types of sentients he used in his Games. To pay for all this he’d set up illegal fleshlabs on the far side of the world, where his mechanics did surgery on those too notorious to venture into the Tank Farms, created monsters to order for use as bodyguards or victims, restructured contract workers bound for worlds where their current shapes would make them inefficient (their consent or lack thereof being ignored as beside the point), ran cloning services to cater to the unhealthier appetites of assorted power brokers, anyone who needed a certain amount of privacy about his or her habits. As Picarefy ghosted up to the fueling satellite, he was in his genlab, talking with the head mechanic about the crew’s progress toward his latest goal.

  “We’re having real trouble with brain capacity. You want a speech center, self-awareness, a degree of sentience, and physical agility. That’s a lot to ask from a brain the size of a macadamia nut.”

  Harmon poked at a rubbery pink infant about the heft of a mouse, a male whose type Ross would have recognized with a shudder, a miniature Herren lacking that species’ intimidating and antagonizing energy. It was lethargic, with no intelligence in the dull watery eyes. “I see.”

  “The skull cavity is simply too small to allow for adequate complexity. To get around that, we’re thinking of providing a secondary brain, probably sited in the buttocks. The secondary would handle mobility and autonomic functions, leaving the cranial brain for sensory input, thought and speech, so on. In those miniature bodies the distance between the two brains won’t be a factor we have to consider. So what you’d have would be legions of fat-arsed soldiers with an additional vulnerability, at the moment we haven’t got a practical way of protecting the buttocks brain. Even with the two brains, you shouldn’t expect too much out of them. You might consider hive-minding them by socketing them into a computer. You could leave the leaders loose to provide a wisp or two of free will.”

  Harmon used his fingertip to push the baby about, then picked it up. “This is useless. Try the secondary brain, we’ll see how that works.” He carried the mute creature to another section of the lab, dropped it into a nid of landcrabs, stayed a moment to watch it being torn apart then went gloomily back to his games on his worldboard. His disappointment was such that he had to demolish three android towns and a small army before he settled to serious gaming.

  “At the service hatch.” Tibo’s words came through the speakers on the bridge, a soft mutter from a throat pickup, transferred through the Lander to Picarefy, the Lander snugged behind a ridge rising beyond the armored dome which housed the crew and computers that controlled the fuel transfers from the feed Burr in synchronous orbit above the dome.

  “Alarm bypassed.”

  Skeen sighed, still annoyed because Tibo had talked her into staying behind, letting him and Rostico Burn handle the crew. You’re too well known, he said. What about you? she said. More men with their own ships, he said, not saying it’s right, just that it’s so. Bigger pool of possibilities. Nonsense, she said. You think you’re going to fool Cidder about who took the fuel? You’re getting back at me for making you sit and wait. Watch that paranoia, luv, he said. All right, all right, she said, go have your fun.

  “Hatch open, going in.”

  Three men standing duty watch in the authorizing chamber. Two sitting at a table, playing a desultory game of grott. The third was on his side on a rutted couch, knees drawn up, face turned to the wall, his breathing slow and loud in a silence filled with small regular sounds from the computers and lifesupport.

  The door slid open. The grott players looked up without much interest, expecting to see a familiar face.

 
“Keep it like it is.” Tibo’s voice was a husky growl, he spoke through a distorter in the mask that covered his head; owl-round holes filled with one-way glass concealed his eyes. He held a burner in his left hand, thumb on the sensor. Rostico Burn wore a similar mask; he stood a step behind Tibo, a burner in his right hand, a stunner in his left. He took a step aside so he could have clear lines on the three.

  The man facing Tibo lay down his cards. He was a tall lean Shartzer, a stubble of whisker covering his face from eyes to chin. Red patches stained his dark skin, the end of his nose; he pressed his thin lips together and glared at Tibo. For a breath or two the situation balanced on a pin point, then the Shartzer drew a deep breath and the stiffness went out of his body.

  Tibo waggled the burner at him. “Feel like dying for the Company?”

  The Shartzer shrugged. “No.”

  Picarefy nosed up to one of the Burr’s spines, positioned her flank to receive the umbilical, dropped the shield and sent a beep to Tibo.

  “Start processing. There’s a ship at the Burr, top her up.”

  “You’re in shit to your neck, chirk. The Company will come after you, can’t run from it, it’ll get you.”

  Tibo answered with a jerk of his burner.

  The Shartzer stood, strolled to the control board; he glanced at Tibo and Rostico Burn, shrugged and tapped in the release code.

  The umbilical snaked out, socked home into Picarefy’s fuel feed. The precarious uncertain shift began from the Burr’s massive bunkers—not quite a flow, not quite an instantaneous translation. Picarefy purred with satisfaction as her stomach filled and a new vigor coursed through her.

  Beep in Tibo’s ear. “Enough,” he said. “Back off.”

  The Shartzer tapped in the close code. Another jerk of the burner. He returned to his seat. “What now?”

  Rostico Burn turned the stunner on him, tapped his thumb on the triggersensor. Two more taps and the other men were laid out, the third without waking; whatever he was on, it had a powerful hold.

  “Right,” Tibo murmured into the throat pickup, “crew under. We’re on our way back.”

  SOME STEPS BACK IN TIME AND SOME DEGREES DISTANT IN SPACE, WE LOOK IN ON THE COLONY TRANSPORT.

  Giulin fidgeted. The Zem-trallen, Marrin fej and Lipitero were talking to the tall alien called Hopeless. He didn’t have anything to say to them, nor they to him. Bohalendas was fiddling with his boxes, looking up now and then to gaze with fascination at the swirls of pallid color flowing across the screen. They were in a smallish room; the inner side was a flat square wall, the outer was a long angular curve, multiply faceted with the viewing screen like a window set in the center of the bulge. The room was bare, a few benches, some chairs bolted down, a rough drugget on the floor, foot trails worn in it, little attempt beyond a coat of paint to soften the sense of being locked inside an odd-shaped metal box. Voices acquired a metallic tinge and subtle, nearly imperceptible echoes. To hear what was being said, you had to be close to the speaker, otherwise the words would be so chopped up, so distorted, fall so dead on the ear, you couldn’t understand a thing. Giulin fingered his imager. He’d already got enough images of this room and the people in it, he wanted to get out, go below and visit the colonists, see how they were getting on, get images of people beginning to adjust to this strangeness. He wanted to see how they were being treated, how much room they had and how their living spaces were arranged. He was in a four-sleeper cubicle with the Zem-trallen, Marrin and Bohalendas; it was barely big enough for them to turn round in. The bunks were hard and too narrow, furnished with pallets that grew harder every hour you slept on them, at least his did, and from the sounds in there during the shipnight—how odd to think of night as something arbitrarily determined by whoever ran the ship—the others weren’t all that comfortable either.

  The tiny alien, Virgin, came wandering in, talking and laughing with quavers in the air that swept along beside her. Giulin didn’t quite know what to make of her. She might be crazy or this might be some weird alien behavior that was perfectly sensible when looked at from the viewpoint of her peers, certainly the tall one was unperturbed by it. He moved warily closer, lifted his imager, waiting for the pattern of line and expression that suited his eye, growing bolder when she didn’t seem to see him even when he stood directly in front of her. He followed her about, entering images onto the matrix with a swift flurry of touches.

  She smiled at him, held out her hand. He stumbled back several steps, startled. Her mouth moved but no sound came out; a moment later, slightly off sync, a Voice spoke behind him, “Bored, young artist?”

  Giulin swallowed, frightened a little but also indignant at the condescension implicit in the words. “Oh, no,” he said. “How could I be?”

  Basso giggle, an absurdity sufficient to restore his equanimity, though he didn’t quite know how to react to invisibilities speaking behind him while a visible enigma mouthed silently in front of him. Courtesy urged him to turn and face the speaker, but he knew in his bones there was no one there. Besides, wherever the Voice sounded, there was a real question about who or what was talking. “Come along,” the Voice said, “they won’t miss you. We’ll show you the holds where the volunteers are stashed. You’ll want images of them, won’t you? Sure you will.” Virgin reached up and put her hand on his arm, nodded gravely, then she turned and ambled out again.

  Giulin glanced around, shrugged and followed her, a disconcerting mix of laughter and whispers trailing along behind him. He couldn’t separate out all the voices though he thought he could recognize six different speakers which confused him even more since he’d in a way come to terms with the bass voice, accepting it as the expression of Virgin’s thought. Six, though, even more, it was enough to addle any reasonable Ykx.

  She led him to a dimly lit hole filled with noises that seemed to echo from eternity. He came from a cave-dwelling species, at least that was what he told himself, but that was then and then was millennia and millennia and millennia ago, and now was a bad-smelling hole filled with scratchy creaks and deep shuddering groans. Not enticing. She looked over her shoulder with that charming meaningless smile, beckoned to him. “Catch hold,” the Voice said, “g-free slide, ride it down.” She pushed off from the sill, drifting up until she could catch hold of a loop attached to a moving chain. Eyes wide, he stumbled after her, had to deal forcibly with a stomach in revolt as the weightlessness hit him, and only remembered to catch hold of a loop after one of them hit him in the head.

  It wasn’t at all like soaring, but after he got used to the noise and the odd sensations in his interior, he started to enjoy the ride. He gave a small tentative whoop and grinned as it echoed away down the tube and came back at him. There was more laughter around him and several of the voices wove their own whoops in and out of the echoes. He started whistling a jingle he learned when he was a cub and the voices joined him, improvising harmonies of their own.

  He tumbled from the tube swaddled in laughter and snatches of song, Virgin dancing round him with a bright-eyed exuberance that convinced him (though he wasn’t so much thinking as reacting) that if she was crazy, more people should be skewed that way.

  The first hold was a vast cylinder divided into a maze of pipes and gratings with solid panels thrown in to provide sleeping cubicles where the travelers could get a measure of privacy. Already Ykx cubs were making themselves thoroughly at home, g-pull being half what they were used to, they were playing tag through the pipes, swinging from level to level, spreading their downy flight-skins and soaring for short hops, laughing, whistling, shouting, chanting count rhymes, playing with the echoes. Tweeners were scattered in small groups, some gathered around habold players, dancing and singing, others worked off their energy in races through the crooked lanes between the cubicles, some were pairing off, talking intensely in whispers. Adults were stretched out on tumppads, dozing, reading, thinking, or they sat in groups drinking iska, reminiscing or speculating about what was waiting for them, or they e
xercised in groups or alone, working off surplus energy. The lighting was clever, areas of creamy glow, other areas of shadow, light shifting with dark, slowly but continually (except in those few spots where a reader had flipped on an auxiliary light), the eye never tired because there were always new shapes, textures, intensities to look at, something to break up the stark stiff horizontals and verticals and mitigate the deadening effect of so much metal. Giulin turned to Virgin. “Did you plan this … ah this stage effect?”

  She knew what he meant, nodded. The bass Voice chuckled behind him. “Amazing what one can do with such recalcitrant materials.”

  Giulin blinked. “Yes,” he said, uncertain what attitude he should take. He sucked in a breath, got his imager ready, took a few panorama shots then plunged into the noisy busy hold to get closer more detailed images, forgetting everything else in his fascination with the task.

  UNLIKE PICAREFY’S HECTIC JOURNEY (HECTIC IN THE FIRST PART, THOUGH THE LATER LEGS PROVED MORE SEDATE), THE TRANSPORT TOOTLED PEACEFULLY ALONG. AT FIRST ZELZONY HELD HERSELF APART FROM THE COLONISTS, SPENDING HOURS WATCHING THE CONVOLUTED FLOW OF FAINT COLOR IN THE COMMONROOM SCREEN, TALKING OCCASIONALLY WITH BOHALENDAS, THOUGH HE SPENT MOST OF HIS TIME WANDERING ABOUT THE BRIDGE AND THE ENGINE ROOMS, USING LIPITERO TO QUESTION HOPELESS. LATER, ZELZONY DESCENDED TO THE HOLD, SEARCHING FOR SOME CLUE THAT WOULD HELP HER UNDERSTAND HOW THESE APPARENTLY SANE AND SENSIBLE FOLK COULD DO SOMETHING SO EXTRAORDINARY AS LEAVE BEHIND FOREVER EVERYTHING THEY KNEW AND HELD DEAR. GIULIN SPENT THE FIRST PART OF THE VOYAGE IN THE FIVE HOLDS, ENTERING HUNDREDS OF IMAGES TO THE MATRICES THE KINRAVALY HAD PROVIDED, TALKING TO OTHER TWEENERS AND SOMETIMES TO THE ADULTS, PLAYING EXUBERANT GAMES WITH VIRGIN AND HER VOICES, FLINGING HIMSELF AFTER HER THROUGH THE SEVERAL TRANSPORT TUBES. HE SLOWED DOWN SOME AS THE DAYS PASSED, SPENT MORE TIME READING, BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE ZEMTRALLEN HAD PASSED ON TO HIM FROM THE ALIENS, THAT TRAVEL IN A STARSHIP WAS A LOT LIKE SITTING FOR A LONG TIME IN A SMALL ROOM WITH NOTHING MUCH TO LOOK AT.