The Shaman of Karres

by Eric Flint

  “Oh. I didn’t think…” admitted the Leewit.

  “I still have more than enough functionality and a few weapons,” said Me’a.

  “Just stun them next time,” said Goth, tersely. “Now let’s find the captain and Ta’zara.”

  “I reckon they’ll find us,” said the Leewit. “I want to find Tippi. If they’ve hurt her…”

  “The gas is unlikely to have affected her,” said Me’a, soothingly. “Remember rochats can survive outside on Cinderby’s World without any form of rebreather. And they’re very hard to catch—or even to hurt.”

  “They still better not have hurt her,” said the Leewit, darkly. “Or I’ll do a lot worse than I’m planning to do to them anyway. And that isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “Let’s settle for stunning the next one, so we can get some answers,” said Goth. “And I’d like a working weapon, if possible. Right now I feel sort of helpless, and I don’t like it.”

  “Well, you’re—” started the Leewit.

  “Ware!” said Goth, as another one of their former captors stepped out of a doorway built into the cave warren. Before the Leewit could even whistle, the man jerked violently and fell over, shuddering.

  Two thin wires trailed back from the dart in him to Me’a’s chair. “Electrical paralysis. You wanted one alive for questioning. I suggest we hurry, though. I hope he’s cooperative.”

  “He will be,” said the Leewit grimly. She went over and whistled gently in the bulky fellow’s ear, while Goth helped herself to his holstered military grade blaster, and a belt of charges. The Leewit knew exactly what that whistle, from so close, would do.

  The problem thereafter wasn’t getting the man’s cooperation, it was getting the man to stop stammering. Fortunately, it turned out that he was one of the guards who had overseen the stripping and redressing of the gassed new prisoners. And yes, they had seen Tippi the rochat. She’d bitten an unwary hand and fled the scene. Someone had tried to shoot her.

  At this point the Leewit slapped him. “You get up and go and find them. Tell them—and all your other friends—that if Tippi is hurt or killed I’ll see to it that they die slowly over a month, in pain. And just so you can tell them what the pain will be like…this is how it will feel.” The Leewit tweaked his nerves and he shrieked and then lolled into unconsciousness. “And not just for seconds either,” she said, grimly. “Come on, let’s go.” She got up.

  “While I understand you’re worried about Tippi,” said Me’a, “do you think we should just be charging around looking for her?”

  “Yes, of course!” said the Leewit.

  “I mean, we need a plan, a method, or sooner or later they will be luckier than we are. And they’ll be expecting us after this. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “So what do you suggest?” asked Goth.

  “It appears that the captain also has very special abilities. I would suggest finding him first and combining his skills with yours. We’re outnumbered and, little as I like to admit it, outgunned. It’s that or gain some high-value hostage.”

  * * *

  Both of those proved quite difficult, however. It was obvious that word had gotten around that some of the prisoners were on the loose, and the Soman Consortium was out in force to try to kill them. The Soman Consortium also had some idea where they were going—which was not an advantage that Goth, Me’a or the Leewit had. They went into the next cave…and into an ambush—with several slightly too hasty blaster bolts having betrayed the ambushers hiding behind a stack of boxes.

  There was a sharp and sudden click and two transparent crystallite screens appeared in front of the wheelchair, as well as the hum of hyperelectronics. At this point Me’a used her wheelchair’s armory. A shriek of rocketry and the boxes and most of those behind them disappeared into an explosive cloud. Advancing into the dust and smashed debris, the Leewit finished the contact with a stunning whistle that the echoes in the cave multiplied.

  As they moved forward, Goth picked up a handheld communicator from the chaos. Its lights still blinked. A voice from it said, “Macsell, Macsell, respond. What’s happening in D5? Do you need backup? Ramio and his squad are coming down from the upper sector.”

  “They’re obviously coordinating. Let’s listen in,” she said. So they did as they moved on. The chatter over the communicator told them two things—firstly, their enemies knew roughly where they were and were sending more fighters. And secondly, they weren’t the only problem the Soman clan had. There’d been a slave breakout. At least twenty slaves were scattered in several groups though the caves. They were apparently armed, or at least some of them were. “That’ll be the captain and Ta’zara,” said Goth, plainly pleased.

  “That is good. But it doesn’t help us,” said Me’a. “I suggest you both stay behind me. The crystallite should be proof against any mechanical attack, and the hyperelectronic shield will diffuse the effect of blaster bolts.”

  “I have another idea,” said the Leewit. “Can that chair shut out sound?”

  “It has a spy screen that should do that.”

  “Right,” she said, reaching for the communicator. “Can you get Goth into it? I’m going to give them a few whistles.”

  “A few seconds and I’ll do my best to shield my own equipment!” said Me’a.

  “Better,” said the Leewit. “I’m planning to bust theirs up a bit, and put the frighteners on them. And to use some new words I’ve learned, seeing as the captain isn’t here.”

  * * *

  Captain Pausert and Ta’zara were finding the resistance stiff, despite the fact that they’d removed quite a lot of heavy weaponry from the first of the Soman Consortium’s men to come into contact with Ta’zara. The Soman men might be good with weapons, but at hand-to-hand combat, they were not so good. The captain could shield them, but it took energy—and then, to respond, he had to take down the cocoon. At first the other prisoners had just followed them, but, as soon as they found a few more weapons in what was plainly the slavers’ rest room, the captain put a stop to that. He handed out weapons on a first-come-first-serve basis. Even in forcecuffs they could still shoot.

  “All of you have a choice of slavery for life, or fighting and maybe dying,” he said. “Split up into small groups. They’ve got the heavy weapons and numbers to deal with us in one group. But that advantage goes away if they’re fighting small battles everywhere. You’ll win some and lose some. If we stay together we will probably all die together.”

  They were in a maze of caves, where the Soman Consortium knew where they were, and the desperate escapees did not. It was a tough fight. The captain was forced to cocoon two of them when they stepped around a corner to face a barricade, and a Mark 20 tripod-mounted blaster cannon, pouring fire on them. He wasn’t sure how they could get out of this one. The cocoon stopped the blaster effects, but if he stopped using it for long enough to fire back, it would be all over for them. He would have to wait for them to run out of charge—and by the size of the power pack they had, that might take a while.

  And then, abruptly, he saw the gunner and his four companions let go of their weapons, clutch their ears—and then run away. He opened the cocoon. “The Leewit is on the loose,” he said, with a broad grin. He saw relief all over Ta’zara’s broad, normally near expressionless face. “That is good. She is my duty to guard. Let us go to them.”

  “We may not see them. Goth will have them hidden in no-shape.”

  “They will see and hear us. It is time for the war chant of my clan. The Leewit and the woman who calls herself ‘Me’a’ will know then that it is us.”

  The war chant echoing through the Soman caves might also have made their enemies run, thought Pausert. But there was no sign of Goth, the Leewit, or Me’a. Just dropped weapons and the still-smoldering remains of a hand communicator.

  “That’s how she did it,” said the captain, pointing. “I suppose we’ll just have to go on looking.”

  The Leewit’s action
s had not destroyed the Soman Consortium, but it had left them unable to communicate, badly rattled and looking to fort up in large groups, rather than searching for the escapees.

  Not surprisingly, the next people who shot at Pausert and Ta’zara were some of the escapees. Fortunately they were rotten shots and no one got killed by the new armory they had picked up, and equally fortunately the other escapees had a captive. He wasn’t the ideal guide—until Ta’zara gave him the benefit of a one-on-one war chant. Then he was much more cooperative.

  The problem was, even with a guide, they had no idea exactly where the others were, or where they were heading. It was just a case of hoping they were lucky. So the captain decided that it was time to rely on his klatha-sourced luck. Which way felt best? He paused. Saw how he felt about the choices. “We’ll go that way,” he said, pointing to a small cave mouth.

  The prisoner looked openly dismayed. “You can’t!” he blurted. “It doesn’t lead out; it leads to the Ghandagar. We…we can’t go there without breathing equipment. I…you would end up as a slave.”

  The feeling was much stronger now. “Then you better hope we catch up with Goth and the Leewit before that.”

  But raw fear made the man frantic, and gave him hysterical strength. He broke and ran.

  Ta’zara cursed. “You should have let me hold him, Captain.”

  “I thought having your hands free to fight was more valuable. Come on. They might find out where we’re going from him, but we still need to get up there in time.”

  So they headed for the Soman Consortium’s slave-maker, “the Ghandagar,” whatever that was.

  * * *

  They were at least able to travel largely unhindered now, Goth thought. Of course, they still had no idea where they were going, but it was better than being shot at. The long passage they were in now sloped upward, and at least had fewer branches. They’d only passed one in the last while. Me’a had been quite keen on going down it, but the Leewit wanted to go on. Goth came down on the onward side. She found the caverns of the Soman clan incredibly depressing. All she wanted to do was get out of them. With everybody else, of course…but at least this cave sloped upward.

  And eventually led into tree-filtered daylight.

  Not a great deal of it, though. There was just one tree. They were in a small rock bowl surrounded by towering cliffs. The bowl itself, barring the one tree, was full of a strange and spiky rock formation.

  As they came out of the cave mouth, a heavy door slid down behind them. Me’a turned hastily to look, as did Goth. It was also plainly hull metal. “Oh, oh,” said Goth.

  The Leewit just said “Tippi!” in delight and rushed forward to pick up the rochat from between the rows of curved and spiky stone going into the structure above. And then Goth became aware of a smell she remembered all too well…the smell of the squill cocoons off the Mantro barge on Parisienne. She was going to throw up… She leaned forward, grabbing one of the stone pillars.

  And immediately became aware of three things. The first was that the essence of putrescence, squill-cocoon scent…was making her feel good. The second was even more horrific. Her klatha ability to read the imprinted history of strong emotions in objects had not gone away. And what she was touching was a thing with many such enormously strong emotions…mostly happy ones. The final fact she became aware of was that what she was touching might be mostly silicates, but was alive.

  She pulled away, and yelled out, “Leewit! It’s alive. It’s the slave-maker! We have to get out of here!”

  The Leewit shook herself, and whistled. That had no noticeable effect.

  Me’a fired another rocket to explode in the structure. It knocked a few of the spikes off but had no other effect, except to make the feeling that Goth really loved the stink of squill cocoon even more intense.

  The Leewit turned to Me’a. “Don’t. That hurt it.” And she leaned in and grabbed the spiky stone that was the Ghandagar, the slave-maker, her hands glowing with klatha force.

  It took seconds before Goth suddenly was aware again of just how revolting sea-squill cocoon scent was, and how that smell made her anything but happy. “Goth,” said the Leewit, “there’s a little vial of some horrible stuff jammed in between the filaments in there. Get rid of it, please. I’m doing some repairs.”

  Goth went looking. She had to follow her nose, even though she’d rather not have. She soon found the vial in a nest of long green-gray dangling strips of rock, next to a small storehouse. Even getting that close made her gag. She tried holding her breath. No good. She’d have had to take a breath and be running in from a lot farther away. In desperation, without thinking about it, she tried ’porting it elsewhere.

  And to her surprise she felt that familiar surge of klatha power as the vial vanished.

  The shock and relief were almost enough to make her fall over. She sat down, hastily, before she fell—and found herself touching the rocky filaments again. Reading the past. It was…not easy. Besides the emotional turmoil of terror, sadness, and then the strange “happiness” there were some very alien images there as well.

  Some of them were oddly familiar. She got the full sensory emersion, with the reading of the past. Details that meant nothing to her and a smell she’d smelled before—paratha! The spice that ruined the taste of everything in comparison. Strange aliens combing the stone filaments… With difficulty, she pulled herself away, and went back to find Me’a and the Leewit.

  She put her hands on the Leewit’s shoulders, lending strength. “My klatha! It’s back.”

  The Leewit didn’t even look up. “I know, stupid. It never went anywhere. It can’t partly go. It doesn’t work like that. And I treated you, remember. I would have known. You just tried too soon and too hard. Now shut up. This is complicated. They hurt the poor thing. And then Me’a shot it. And it is half-starved. Short of minerals.”

  “What does it eat?” asked Goth warily, wondering if they were diet items for this…alien her little sister was healing.

  “Leaves. Leaves from different kinds of trees…but it can’t collect them,” said the Leewit with a faint air of puzzlement.

  “They used to bring it leaves. And brush its filaments. It likes that. Long before it was left here alone and hungry and lonely. Long before the humans came and found it,” said Goth. “It doesn’t like them. They don’t look after it. It wants to go home. Back to the ones who look after a poor Arerrerr.”

  “Arerrerr?”

  “What it thinks of itself as. A sort of noise it makes. It’s not very bright. It has thought these things very often and been very sorry for itself. Oh. And it remembers rochats. Along with the aliens that used to look after it.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Me’a, warily. “I dropped some bugs in the tunnel up here. I’m picking up some sounds. They’re coming this way.”

  “The Leewit is healing the thing. The Arerrerr.”

  “But…that’s the thing that made willing slaves for the Karoda slavers. Is the Leewit enslaved?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the Leewit. “Anyway, that was the Soman, using it. They blocked its own scent gland, and they put the smells they wanted fixed into the neural pattern there. It thought it was making them love it, making them happy loving it, looking after it, feeding it, caring for it. That’s what it does. It is a kind of pet. It just works better on the human nervous system than the one it was made for.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “The thing is,” said Me’a to Goth, “we are basically trapped in here. I mean, yes, we have the Leewit curing this creature. In a way that’s the most valuable hostage we could have, but we’re rather stuck here with it. And if the Soman Consortium got it to do what they wanted once before, they can again. It’s not something we can carry away in our pockets.”

  Goth shook her head. “Even if we have to destroy it, I’m not leaving it to either the Somans or the Iradalians. Or anyone else for that matter. At least now I have my klatha skills to add to the Leewit’s. I can hide u
s so they simply can’t see us. I can ’port things. But I want to go back through that door to find the captain. And Ta’zara.”

  She felt faintly bad about the afterthought, but she really, really wanted to see Pausert. Her klatha was back…if it had ever gone away. She wanted to tell him, so badly. If they could be together now, as compared to when she thought she’d lost it and couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

  “It’s possible—but not that likely—that I can blow that door down. But there must be some way of opening it. I assume there’s a mechanism this side too, in case they got stuck out here. The Soman crowd must come up here, I suppose, if only to feed the creature.”

  “Yes, but it is probably hidden. There’s a little hut back there. It’s worth checking, I suppose. Then I can try the door for what imprinted memories it might have.” Goth wrinkled her face in distaste. “It’s not likely to be a pleasant experience. I’ll see what I can find first.”

  The hut proved to be a cold store for vials—labeled and carefully ordered. It didn’t take long to figure that those were the odd pheromones the Somans had been using to make…what did the Leewit call it? The Arerrerr. There was a lot labeled sea-squill exudate. So exactly how the Mantro barges got their willing workers was now more than plain. Goth put a handful of the vials in her pocket. They’d ’port easily and might make a good weapon if they were just thrown hard.

  She was looking for any possible switches or controls when she heard the Leewit calling, so she ran back. The Leewit was sitting down, resting against one of the Arerrerr pillars, or rather, legs. She looked, Goth thought, tired and young. She was also trying to talk around some sort of compressed seed bar she was cramming into her face. The rochat was fastidiously eating a few crumbs with the look of doing her a huge favor.