by Jo Clayton
Adelaar swung around. “I’ve located all lifesources that the ship can detect. That means exactly what it says. There may be dead areas, this is an antique and badly maintained, and there are places in her deliberately kept off the record; if he knows about those places, well, he knows a lot too much. You’re wrong, Quale. We don’t dare let him wait us out.”
Leaving them to chew that over, she kicked around, touched a sensor and leaned back to watch the screen as the Brain flipped from spot to spot, froze momentarily on a scene, long enough to take in the details, then moved on to the next. Akkin Siddaki and Tazmin Duvvar supervising the tag end of the body-gathering. Flip-flip, body squads walking tiredly to the last few bodies, a whore here, a scutsweep there.
After a short stretch of looking on while the Brain flashed through scenes that she’d seen before, Adelaar moved restlessly, then pushed her chair around and leaned toward Pels; for several minutes she talked in an undertone to him. The Rau listened, nodded, then got busy on the sensor pads at his substation, his eyes fixed on the notation screen. Over their heads the images flickered from the stunned shipfolk in the sleeping cells to the scattered bodies of the dead. Adelaar sat back, satisfied.
The eyepoint jumped to the Hordar and their prisoners marching up from the Drive Sector. Kanlan Gercik and his cousin Zhurev Iavru were the first to appear, scouting ahead for ambushes. The wounded west-coaster came next; he was stretched on an improvised litter being carried by Meskel Suffor and another west-coaster. Then three Hordar from Gercik’s Raiders. Then the captive Drive Gang with more litters, two wounded, one dead. One stunned and heavily unconscious Huvved. Harli Tanggаr had her sister isya Melly Birah with her and two women from another isya on the far side of the captives, all of them keeping a fierce eye on their prisoners. Behind them came the rest of the squad, the rearguard.
The eyepoint left them, whipped to the drive room, hovered momentarily over the cooling corpses, leaped again and focused on an ancient eremite living in a rat’s nest of scraps and paper and scavenged bits of equipment, filthy white hair knotted on top his head, a few threads of beard, vermin crawling in and out of his hair, in and out of his layered filthy clothing.
Quale rubbed his hand along his jaw. “Makes you itch,” he said.
“What?” Elmas Ofka came quietly to stand beside him. She stared up at the image. “What are we looking at?”
Another shift. Another mouse in the walls, this one painfully neat and weirder than the rat, he was walking through elaborate square corners, running a folded whiter-than-white cloth over every surface in his sparsely furnished lair, an irregular space created by the intersection of stressbeams and baffles, choosing the areas he dealt with according to a pattern in his miswired head.
“Discard,” Quale said. “Took the measure of life up here and took himself out of it.”
“Why are we looking at this?”
Lirrit Ofka came over, leaned against Elmas Ofka, arm curled loosely about her waist. “Yuk.”
The eyepoint was hovering over a nest of scavenger moles big as hunting cats, the young nosing blindly at the side of one while another heavily gravid female was regurgitating scraps of anonymous meat for half a dozen yearlings.
“Why are we looking at these things?”
Adelaar turned her head. “The Brain searched out lifeforms, Hanifa. We have to see them all before we know if one could be Parnalee.”
The eyepoint continued to jump. More moles, bats, mobile fungi, other, less-identifiable life forms, things mutated into half-glimpsed horrors.
“This is wasting time.”
“No,” Adelaar said, “we’re finding out where not to look for him.”
The large screen went blank, flipped back to the schematic of the Bridge.
“I was afraid of that, he’s in a blind spot somewhere.” She kicked the chair around, taped nervously at the arm. “Probably listening to us.”
“Listening?”
“Were it me in his place, I would be. At the least, listening.”
“So where is he?”
“I told you. A blind spot.”
“Get the others up here. We’ll do it our way, gridsearch this thing till we find him.”
“Fine. If you’ve got a year or two.”
“What?”
“How long would it take to search gul Inci room by room?”
Elmas Ofka frowned at the screen, one arm folded across her breasts, her fingers moving slowly up and down the biceps of her other arm. “Then how…?”
“Let me think about that awhile. And see if I can do something about snoops.”
“Ah.”
Adelaar crossed her legs, tapped her fingers on the arms of her chair. “The holding area for the prisoners is ready and Pels has set the tube to it. It’s near one of the lifepod banks so your people won’t have far to move them once you’re ready to pop the pods.”
9
Parnalee smiled, lifted his glass in a salute. “Clear them out, you oozy whore. Clear them all out, it’s woman’s proper work, cleaning house. Clear out yourself and leave me to fry.” He laughed. “It’s not going to happen, bitch.” He stroked his free hand along the smooth black flank of the interface. “Your time is coming, love. Wait a little longer, until they’ve licked up the vermin and I can move without running into strays.” He sipped at the brandy, his eyes on the lethal gray egg sitting on its mobile bed. “A little longer, love.”
10
The Bridge cleared quickly. Aslan watched the raiders swagger out, chivvying the Bridge crew before them. The weight of a helpless rage and inturning violence had been lifted from now that they had the Warmaster and she could no longer threaten their families and the land itself; should they happen across Parnalee, they’d tear him limb from limb, but it’d be (marginally) a more abstract action with overtones of justice, not simply the blood boiling up. There were small cruelties as they hustled their captives out, an elbow in the ribs, pinches on arms and buttocks; mostly though, they cut at the crew with a cheerful contempt, a facility of tongue developed to work off anger at wrongs that the law or force of arms couldn’t… no, wouldn’t right, the retaliation for the indifference of the Huvved Fehz to the suffering of the Hordar poor in the cities and on the grasslands, to the pain of Hordar families forced off the land they’d worked for centuries before the Huvved came and claimed it. She cross hatched an area of the pad, no words left, not right then; the Ridaar was flaking this, that was enough. Trouble ahead for everyone. These hill-and-grassers, they were what the Huvved had made them; when the war was over, when Elmas Ofka and those like her were trying to put the world together again, these raiders, bandits more than anything else, they were bound to be provoking, out of control, sources of instability, inviting a reimposition of the injustices that had created them. They had to change. She sighed. It wouldn’t happen. She looked at the crosshatching, a rambling nothing, started writing again, stopping, thinking, no longer noting impressions, being her father’s daughter for a change, poet’s daughter trying a poem of her own.
la le la la le la
yesterday be gone away
la le la la le la
games we play
words we say
la le la la le la
dead and done
dry bones in a drying pond
ripples pass beyond and gone
la le la la le la
echoes to relay replay
yesterday
la le la la le la
dessicated dull and dry
are you am I
are we today
nil and null
reclaiming sway
on and over
yesterday
la le la la le la
goodby lover
never hover
can’t recover
yesterday.
She sighed, dissatisfied, and pushed the pad away.
11
Jamber Fausse stood beside Quale, watching Adelaar and Pels hunched over the
ir consoles. “There’s this woman I know,” he said, “had a kid, a boy. Time he was three he was taking things apart, see how they worked. Drove him near crazy when he couldna figure what did what ’n why. No one to school him, they were borderfolk, lived ’tween Chel and grass, family got broke up, the da, he was horned and headpriced, she took the boy down to Inci. He’s dead. Built him a yizzy ’fore he was nine. Bitbits got him, shot away the pods, poured his firejuice on him and lit a match. This Parnalee of yours, you say he wants to kill Huvveds?”
Quale smoothed his hand along his beard. “Yeh, but you wouldna like his methods.”
“Eh?”
“Why you think he wants this ship?”
“Since you be reading the man’s mind, you tell me.”
“Work the sums yourself, he’s after the hide of every Huvved on Tairanna and he doesn’t give a handful of hot shit for Hordar, not being Hordar or having any ties groundside. You doubt that, go look at your dead down in Sleepers. And he’s cracked to the marrow. Talk to Aslan, you want the book on that, have her read her bonebreaks and bruises for you. For that matter, ask the Hanifa what she thinks. Way she’s acting now, she got the point a time ago.”
“Point being don’t trust Outsiders?”
“Long as you use your head, not your gut.”
Jamber Fausse took a long look at him, then strolled across to Adelaar. “Yabass,” he said.
She started, looked round. “A minute. Let me finish this.”
He waited, hands clasped behind him, watching lines of symbol and number flicker in and out so fast no one who didn’t already know what they were could take them in. The schematic of the Bridge returned suddenly, the green lines overlaid with red. Adelaar contemplated them a moment, then looked over her shoulder, “What is it?”
“What’s this Parnalee know you don’t know?”
Quale frowned at the screen. “You’ve shut him out?”
“Right. He can’t hear us now.”
Jamber Fausse looked at the screen, then from one Outsider to the other. “What’s he know you don’t?”
She pushed the chair around so she didn’t have to keep stretching her neck. “Obviously he thinks he can take her away from me.”
“Can he?”
“How the hell do I know? All I can do is scramble this Brain so radically he couldn’t possibly straighten it out before she drops in Horgul.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Jamber Fausse looked down at his hands; he held them palms up, thumbs out, fingers cupped in fingers; he looked at them as if he read Parnalee’s mind in the lines and folds. “He may be crazy, but he’s no fool. Has to be something else.”
After a moment’s strained silence, Quale said, “Monarch class Warmaster. The youngest it could be is ten thousand, more likely around fifteen. My Slancy was built around then. Rummul Empire Trooper. The Rummul were the ones that built most of the Warmasters, so she could know something about them. We never bothered purging Memory; matter of fact, some of the bits in there have been useful for this and that, so when she needed more capacity, we just added it on. Del, you think you could punch a line to her without him knowing?”
“He’ll know something’s happening, not what.”
“He knows that now, with you cutting him off like this.”
“Your point. Give me room, this is going to get delicate at times, I’ll let you know when I’m ready to link.”
12
Kinok skritched two of ves tentacles together, sounding ves irritation at being drawn away from an erotic rite ve was performing with vesself and ves new Kahat and a drivehead. After some more strident grumbling which the infant Kahat didn’t bother translating, ve allowed vesself to be talked into a degree of reasonableness.
“Call up Oldest Memory for me,” Quale said. “Reference Monarch Class Warmaster.”
“You are not getting involved with that fancy, are you?”
Quale blinked. The words were dismissive, but Kinok somehow managed to infuse the light tenor of the translator with a degree of wistful longing more appropriate to the romantic hero of some operatic fantasy. He opened his mouth, intending to explain what he planned to do with the Warmaster, changed his mind before more than a croak got out. He’d run into difficulties before with Kinok, over things that seemed eminently reasonable to him but which slammed into one or more of the Paem’s peculiar religious and moral tenets. Killing the Warmaster meant killing her drives and he was willing to bet that Kinok would object strenuously to being connected in any way with the death of a set of drives. He thought about the voice tone. Especially if the Paem was getting his roots in a twist about this particular set. Erotic passion did weird things to the panter; he winced as a few of his own more idiotic obsessions went floating across his mind. “Not involved,” he said. “Just pull together everything you can find and squirt it over to us, we’ll keep the line open.”
“It is in progress,” the translator said. “How much longer is Slancy staying at this place?”
“Getting bored, Kinok?”
“Ve-who-speaks is never bored; only a stupid mind, a mind gross and unspiritual grows bored. Ve-who-speaks merely wishes the answer to an ordinary question.”
“Ah. Not so ordinary. With luck, two three days, maybe four.”
“That is heard with pleasure. Ve-who-speaks will prepare the blessings and ready our Slancy for the run.”
“Get her ready for trouble, too, Kinok my friend. We might have a hot welcome when we shift out of the insplit.”
“Ve-who-speaks has had our Slancy listening. Her ears have tingled not once. Ve-who-speaks believes those on that world still do not know that they have visitors.”
“That could change fast.”
“There is something you are not telling ve-who-speaks, Swar. Tell it.”
“Things are happening onworld, Kinok; we’ll be finishing up our collecting with the Imperator’s Palace. That’s bound to be noisy.”
There was a cool silence from the speaker. On the screen, Kinok’s plummy scattered eyes had a skeptical glitter that Quale had no difficulty reading. There were going to be some difficult days ahead. Damn all idiot religions, they never caused anything but trouble for everyone around them, believers or not. He heard the ting that announced the arrival of Slancy’s data and suppressed a sigh of relief.
“Talk to you later, Kinok; we’ve got some clearing up here.”
13
“… redundancy,” Aslan translated, sliding into the summary at the end of the dataflow, her voice husky, dry as her throat. Elmas Ofka sat in the kingchair, her eyes fixed on the great screen, on words she couldn’t read, numbers she couldn’t decipher; faced with Parnalee’s defection and the unhappy realization that he’d used her fears and prejudices to undercut her and threaten everything she was fighting for, she’d swung back to a tooth-end trust in Aslan. “It is rumored,” Aslan continued, “that even the mainBrain is duplicated; if it is damaged seriously enough, a sisterBrain takes charge. Oh, I see. Forget that, Hanifa, just me realizing what Parnalee is up to. Um, yes, these rumors call her the Dark Sister because she is supposed to be programmed to attack without cease until the ship prevails or is destroyed. Analysts studying the Warmaster have reported that they are unable to discover any clues to the location or even the existence of the Dark Sister. Some believe that the tales about her are put out to heighten the terror factor and its demoralizing effect on the enemy. These discount the rumors and believe that the Dark Sister exists only in the minds of Rummul information officers. There is nothing in Memory to substantiate either conclusion.” She drew a dry tongue across dry lips. “That’s it,” she said, “that seems to be everything that Quale’s ship knows about Warmasters.”
She watched her mother shut down the flow, pleased to be finished with the awkward job of translating technical details into a language that didn’t have reasonable equivalents, not all that happy with what she’d read. She wasn’t convinced by the
disclaimers at the end. Like Jamber Fausse said, Parnalee might be crazy, but he wasn’t stupid. There were some hazy dark rumors floating like smoke through University subfiles, unsubstantiated speculation about the intent and purpose of that institute of his. Hmm, she thought, maybe I can talk Chancellor DizZawbawka into hiring Mama to worm in there and find out what Omphalos is hiding, he’s got a kink about secret societies. This is a note you don’t write down, woman, but you don’t forget it either. She smoothed her hand across her mouth and watched Elmas Ofka, interested in the Dalliss’ reaction to what she’d heard.
Elinas Ofka pinched thoughtfully at her lip. “There is a second Brain,” she said. “There has to be. Can you find it, Adelaar yabass?”
“I can try.”
Quale chuckled; he was sitting at a down station, feet resting on a pile of empty medpacs, arms folded across his chest. “You need stroking, Del? Hah! you know how good you are.”
“I also know the work of several of those analysts in that report; they might be a long time dead, but if they couldn’t find anything, it either wasn’t there or I’m likely to find the far side of Beyond before I trip over the clone.”
“And didn’t I not so long ago hear you say that this Brain is big, powerful and dumb? Dumb. That was the word you used, wasn’t it? And didn’t I hear you say we’ve learned considerable since this ship was built?”
“Quale, don’t play shitgames with me. It’d take a Memory the size of the one on University to record what you don’t know about penetration. What about a real game? A wager. Double your fee against no fee on whether the clone is actually there and I find it.”