Skeen's Search

by Clayton, Jo;

  AFTER SIXTY-SEVEN DAYS HOPELESS BROUGHT THE TRANSPORT INTO REALSPACE AND SLID IT INTO ORBIT ABOUT A CINDER OF A WORLD.

  PART VI: THROUGH THE GATE

  Lipitero stood beside Zelzony watching a world turn in the screen, a dead cinder of a world moving past beneath them. “That was once Surranal, the Nagamar homeworld,” she murmured. “It was a waterworld, green and wet and hot. Timka told me that in the Tanul Lumat, that’s a university of sorts, a museum of sorts, a lot of things, anyway, in the Tanul Lumat they have ancient Naga carvings and tapestries showing Naga memories of Surranal. It was a lush, beautiful place before the Six Year War.” She sighed. “Hopeless has had a message from Skeen. She’s out and clear, she’ll be here in two or three days. Kildun Aalda is five days on.” She held up her hands. They were trembling. “Five days. Six maybe. And I’m home. And I’m home with Ykx to fill the Gathers.”

  Zelzony only half-listened to Lipitero. She was thinking more of Rallen and what the coming years would do to it. Nothing would be the same. Even when she got back from this useless trip, she couldn’t be sure she’d find the world she left. The Kinravaly had rented Workhorse, paying for it with some of the Great Treasures in the Kinravaly’s Horde, masterpieces collected over the millennia since the Ykx had been on Rallen. What good will treasures do us if we die, she said, it isn’t as if they’ll be destroyed. Very much on the contrary, so Skeen tells me. But they won’t be ours, Zelzony said, they won’t be here. They are the heritage of our species, Zo. A part of that heritage, Zeli. Only a part. Tell me, my love, tell me if you can, what use are treasures to a nation of ghosts? With that tug we can mine our asteroids, the aliens say some of them are almost pure iron, our Seekers confirm the possibility. We gain far more than we lose by this trade, Zel Zeli. It’s not exaggerating much to say we can have space flight in ten years, my Zel, our own tugs. In twenty, who knows where we’ll be. Ah, Zo, Zelzony thought, ah, Zo, she wanted to say, it isn’t as easy as that. You can’t separate out a single strand of endeavor and keep it pure. In ten years we might have our own tugs, in ten years we might have war. Do you have any notion how bad things are getting in Urolol, how explosive that situation is? Do you have any notion how far the infection from there has spread through workers everywhere? Even Itekkillykx workers are restless and unhappy. They aren’t content to be what they were born to be, not any longer; they can turn ugly at the blink of an eye. Do you remember telling me that honors mean more than achievement to our managerials? You’re going to have your hands full of displaced managerials, Zo. Once this space ranging gets started, they won’t be about to cope, they won’t have the flexibility of mind, and I might be one of those, saa saa, all this gives me a headache that won’t go away. Yeasty times! tchah. So many angry Ykx. We’ve always comforted ourselves with the proved notion that Ykx may get angry and thump each other now and then, but they don’t kill, that Gurns and Gurn-sets can argue and reach the point of explosion, but they explode into boycotts and attacks against property, they don’t fight wars. Where’s that comfort now when three Ykx have tortured and killed for the pleasure in it? Are they sports thrown off the main line of development, sterile failures, at least none of them had any children. No official children. Are there others out there with that heritage and ignorant of it? Are Peeper, Eshkel and Laroul harbingers of genetic change? Are there hundreds, perhaps thousands, among us with that capacity for savagery who don’t know it themselves because for one reason or another it hasn’t been triggered in them? What’s going to happen in Urolol? In Marallat? What are we going to do about them? Borrentye thinks he’s getting somewhere in Marallat, that he’s going to be able to displace Sulleggen and her pets with a minimum of distress, but he’s got nothing to work with in Urolol. The Consortium won’t budge a hair’s breadth and the workers have mocked his efforts, he has nightmares of a bloodbath one day soon, there’s too much hate, too much fear, the place is too polarized. I suppose we’ll have to wait till it happens then do our best to patch things together. Aliens, ayy All-Wise, look what happened when a few came down on us, there’ll be more of them now that we’re found. This first bunch is friendly, probably honest enough, though who can say that for sure even now? but what will the next bunch be like? What will they do to us? Ah, Zo, I’m supposed to handle this, how can I? Hmmm. Bohalendas is riding this wind easily enough, well, he’s an easy-going sort, not much interested in anything outside his field. Have to talk to Selyays, get an angversen group ready to evaluate alien artifacts, alien ways of thinking, we’ll need one of those translators, saa saa, Zel, scratch a reminder on your ear, you don’t like thinking about all the confusion out here, but you won’t be able to get away from it, so a translator for the Kinravaly Rallen and the Zem-trallen. What are they going to do to us, my Zo? All these aliens. Ahh, I was placating my guilts when I brought young Giulin along. My undermind could be brighter than my intellect. He comes from Seekers and managerials, he’s no rebel or malcontent and has no intention of leaving Rallen, but he’s at ease here, with the colonists and the aliens both, he’s made friends with the weird one called Virgin, he uses the shipways as if he’d been born to them. Might be a useful thing to gather angversen groups of Tweeners. Use Giulin to help with this, saa saa; if I’d been thinking, perhaps I could have talked the aliens into bringing a dozen tweeners along for the ride. No use regretting what can’t be helped. Ay All-Wise, I dreamed of soaring starflight, but that was controlled soaring, on our own terms, at our own pace. A dream. A nightmare now. Control? Saaa.

  She scowled at the world cinder turning below them and shivered. We are Ykx. We ARE Ykx. We are YKX. That will not happen to us.

  Picarefy came swimming round the sun and wiggled into orbit beside the transport, Skeen’s face bloomed in the screen on the transport’s bridge.

  “Ta, Hopeless. How’s things?”

  “Ta, Skeen. Damn quiet. Virgin’s enjoying herself, but me, I’m about to rot.”

  “Mmf. Things are going to get hectic soon enough. I came round by Kildun Aalda. Fuckin’ Junks, they’ve cleared the planet all right, but they’ve left behind a snagship and a couple maulers, I don’t know what for, that world is starting to smoke. Hooo, Hopeless, we’re going to have to go in when the Gate’s nightsided or we’ll fry.”

  “Try for a sneak?”

  Skeen grinned. “Nooo. Petro came up with some neat little tricks. By the way, tell her the Shear worked but it was rather hard on Pic and us. Anyway, give me a five-hour headstart and don’t hurry a lot coming after me, Pic will squirt the specs over to get you there when the Gate is in the twilight zone. We don’t want to hang around waiting for the world to turn. I should’ve knocked off that snagger by then and got the maulers out of action. I’ll take the Lander down and mark the spot for you to set down. Um, you’d better get the Ykx ready to go; you’re going to have to get them out in a little short of twelve hours.”

  “No problem. You know, I like them, these Ykx, they don’t screw around messing up like most species I come across. Pass me the specs, this is some thing we’re doing, Skeen, but believe me, I want it over with. Virgin and me, we’ve decided we’re going to use the rest of the gelt endowing University with Xeno scholarships, then start looking about for something interesting to do.”

  “Keep a little for me, eh? I’ve got a shield for you like nobody’s seen, fool all but the best and luckiest of the flow readers.”

  “Ah, well, that’s different, but you know I have to talk to Virgin and the Abode before I get fancy.”

  “Right. Where you want to meet?”

  “Sundari. Cidder won’t stick his long nose in there. I assume you kicked him in the nuts again and he’ll be steaming around hunting for a way to get his teeth in you.”

  “So I did and so he is, far as I know. What’s the Eye say?”

  “Sundari, that’s all.”

  “Ready?”

  “Shoot.” A soft crackle of arriving data, a beep when the flow was done. “Got it. See you down on Aalda.”
>
  “Ta.”

  Five days later, Hopeless translated to realspace, located the crippled Honjiukum maulers and eased round them in a wide half-circle. She listened a moment to the messages they were exchanging, grimaced. “That’s one crazy mad bunch of Junks, Virgin. How long before reinforcements arrive?” She listened a moment, nodded. “Good enough, we should be out by then.” She listened again. “I know, but that’s Skeen. You got to take her as she is or let her alone. I’d bet she did her quota and more getting clear of Cidder’s lice and couldn’t bring herself to plink another can.” She listened. “Uh-huh, looks like that shield’s worth at least half what she’s going to sting us for it.” She listened. “Yes. Got it. Here we go.”

  The beacon from the surface was getting louder and firmer every moment. Hopeless glanced nervously at the swollen unhealthy sun with its continual small flares. “Look at that mess, sheeeyah, Virgin, I wouldn’t put down dayside on a bet.” She listened. “Yeah, I know. It’s going to be a little hell even at night.” She began concentrating fiercely on the readouts, nodding an occasional acknowledgment as the Virgin trilled, mouthed, muttered and otherwise conveyed data and instruction to her.

  Skeen left Picarefy in orbit with Tibo and a rebellious Rostico Burn aboard to watch for swarming Junks, and came down, battered by winds and lightning, to a landing more precarious than she liked, hitting ground harder than was good for the Lander. She started the beacon, sat rubbing at her ribs where the safety straps had caught her. “My hide is going to be a crazy quilt when these bruises have a chance to develop.” The Gate was open, sending out its Call, reminding her of the dance it put her through the first time she jumped it running from a Junk hunting pack. “This will be over in a few more hours. Hoosh, I need some playtime.”

  “I suppose,” Timka said absently. She’d done her shifts, got rid of her own small hurts and was Pallah again in pants, tunic, sandals. Her skin was rippling, the ripples matching the Gate Call’s throb. That Call was painful, but no more so than the indecision that tugged her two ways at once. She stared blankly at the screen. A powerful wind blew outside, driving the silky dust before it, pale dust lit by the aurora’s erratic dance and the lightning that punctuated the minutes as she and Skeen waited for the transport to arrive. She couldn’t see the Gate and the nearest ruins were shrouded by the dust; more than dust shrouded the way she’d take from here, two tracks for her, dividing at the Gate. If she stayed this side, she’d have Skeen as sponsor, expediting her way through the universe of the Pits. Or the universe beyond the Pits, if she chose that route. She knew enough now to realize the value of the promise of help Skeen made her back when all this started. And she’d picked up several offers of employment from people she’d met in Sundari Pit. The possibilities were enormous and exciting. She wanted that life and she was going to have it. Sometime. Now? That was the question. If she jumped to Mistommerk, Lifefire solo knew when she could jump back and what she’d find on Aalda when she did. She had no doubt that the Ykx would open the Gate for her, she’d earned anything they chose to give her in the succeeding years and being Ykx they were good at paying debts. I’ve done it, she thought. I’ve made up my mind. When did it happen? How did I do it without realizing it? Going home. Going. Home. She’d come away before without really making a break from her roots, drifting, yes, that was it, letting events pull her along because she saw no viable alternative. Oh, yes, Min, wasn’t that what you’d been doing all your life? Drift? You never cared enough about anything to fight for it, not even yourself. Habit and circumstances. Yes. No more. It was time she took possession of her past, her world, the place she ought to have in both. Then she could turn her back on all that and take possession of the promise here. Crossing to Mistommerk might mean decades over there, however long it took for Kildun Aalda to cool and the Junks to retake and remake it, but she had time; some Min lived for centuries and she meant to be one of those. Going home. After all this time, after all that had happened, after a hundred decisions made one way or another that unmade themselves after a sleep or two, it was done, it was finally done. She was mildly surprised to find herself convinced she knew, irrevocably unquestionably, where she was going, now that she was up against the edge and had to play or back off. Going home. Facing Telka and kicking her where it hurt, teaching her not to be stupid any more. Well, no. Stupidity is an incurable disease, isn’t it? Djabo’s feeble brain, as Skeen would say, this agonizing over come or go wasn’t worth the sweat it wrung out of me. She sighed and put aside those fidgeting memories. All they’d give her was a pain in the gut and wind in the head.

  Repellers flaring, whipping the powdery white dust into ever greater frenzies the transport drifted overhead then sank with ponderous dignity to the valley floor, its weight driving it down and down into the earth until the lower third was buried. Free electricity danced dangerously around the metal flanks of the transport until Hopeless scraped them clear and spun the charge away, drawing after it the pall of dust, temporarily clearing the air about the ship.

  On the bridge Lipitero was shivering. Even through all that metal she could feel the Gate’s Call throbbing in her bones. Her jaws trembled. She couldn’t speak.

  Zelzony watched the screen (dark ghostly lines of wind-driven dust intermittently lit by jags of lightning and changing tints leached from the auroras whipping hugely across the hidden sky), feeling awe and a touch of fear. In a moment or two she would be setting foot on alien soil, one of the first Rallykx to do so since the Landing on Rallen; despite the scouring gale she wanted urgently to be out there. Part of her restlessness was the Calling of the Gate, yet only a part. Zelzony rubbed thumb against fingers. Alien soil. No, don’t think of it, think of the Gate. Lipitero had warned her about the Call, had warned all of them and Skeen had underlined what she said. It will net you like a fisher nets a school and pull you in and there’s nothing you can do to fight it—don’t waste your energy, go with the flow. It’s all true, Zelzony thought, all these places and people I never quite believed in. In a few breaths, she’d see this Stranger’s Gate, she’d step through it and look around so she could report to Zuistro on actualities rather than emotional certainties. She gazed at the screen and began dreaming again, dreaming of the time when Rallen would have other Gates, when Rallykx would go soaring in and out of them, free as the winds outside; she shivered, that simile wasn’t exactly comforting when she looked at the scourbath of dust waiting for them, an Ykx caught in that would be driven by the wind’s will, not her own. Ah, well, there was a green and pleasant world beyond that dust, and cousins waiting there for them. Improbable fantastic story, improbably fantastically true.

  A courtesy beep sounded and Hopeless cleared a cell in the center of the dust storm, greeted Skeen and said, “I wouldn’t like to repeat this landing when the weather’s bad.”

  “Try it in a lander, you’ll learn the real meaning of insecurity. Your passengers ready to move?”

  “Soon’s they get the signal. I’m going to break out some spare cable, otherwise who knows how many we’ll lose to the wind. My gauges here say fifty km gusting to seventy. How close is that thing?”

  “Any closer and you’d be sitting on it. Your forward lock is about twenty meters away. I’ve got the exact point plotted, when you give me the go, I’ll shoot it over to you. Um, you’re probably feeling the Call.”

  “Some. Virgin?” She listened. “Virgin says it makes her skin itch and the Eye has got the twitches. She wants to be one of those who crosses. You mind?”

  “None of my business to say who goes and who don’t. Listen, that cable of yours, have a couple remotes stretch it to the post and lintel arrangement that marks the Gate this side and anchor it, fix it so you can shoot pulses of current through it, something that will jolt but not crisp whoever catches hold of it. I was caught in that call and I couldn’t break it even when it was scaring the shit out of me, and it wasn’t a tenth that powerful then. Um. Let me know when the cable’s up, I’m not moving till it’s re
ady.”

  “I hear. Consider it done.”

  Breather mask on, muffled to the eyebrows to keep out as much dust as she could, Skeen let the Gate take her and lead her through the ruins; she stumbled into the cable, felt the mild shock and smiled when it temporarily muted the compulsion. After following the cable to the Gate, she plunged through and jerked off the mask. The glade hadn’t changed in the past two years, though it was night now, not morning as it was when she and Timka left, a cool quiet spring night with a crescent moon just above the treetops. She wiped a hand across her face, stood slapping the mask against her sides, driving out spurts of powdery dust as Timka came lunging through, arms outstretched, eyes jammed shut behind the lenses of her mask. The little Min stripped, snapped into bird form and jumped clear of the cloud of dust she left behind. When she was Pallah again, she looked at her clothing, wrinkled her nose and grew a neat coat of silver-gray fur instead of getting dressed. She glanced at Skeen, but said nothing; she started prowling about the glade, her green eyes turning and turning, taking in the stiff silent trees, the white wall glistening off toward the west. Skeen saw her shiver as the Ever-Hunger reached for them both, she could feel it tugging at her and she knew Timka was more sensitive to it than she was, but the seductive compulsion had a tentative, rather lackadaisical feel, the Hunger had gorged royally two years ago when Lipitero loosed it on Telka and her followers, growing immense and sated, then the Sydo Ykx spanked it and slapped it back behind that prison wall. As a result, the greed and need weren’t quite what they were when Skeen jumped the Gate the first time. Timka reached up, touched a spray of leaves, rubbed a foot across the grass, an odd bemused look on her face. Finding out there’s no going home, I suppose; I couldn’t wear this world for six months, given my choice. “Any of your cousins hanging about?”