A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  And he is a Bori—of sorts—so he might feel as comfortable as we do in high places.

  Not that there were any “high places” on shipboard. But there was one place that, with a little bit of imagination, could be turned into one.

  First she needed cover. She ordered a meal and dumped half her caf. Then she rushed down to the transtube. As the module accelerated, she wondered what she would say to him if she did find him. We’re Bori, we’re both Bori, she thought, and a weird urge to laugh shook her.

  When the module stopped, she leaned against the door, trying to still the hammering of her heart. A few deep breaths, a sip of caf. She still wanted to laugh—she was even less adept than Captain Fasthand at real-time skulkery. Which is why I’m on this ship in the first place. I just hope I live to get off.

  She shut her eyes, fighting down panic. Then, one step, another, another, until she reached the access lock to the long missile tube.

  And she knew right away that someone was there—and that he had found, or programmed for himself, the little alteration in the grav that made it possible to sit on the edge of the hatch and feel as if a kilometer-long drop stretched out below one’s feet. The access lock hatch showed a quartered circle with a single yellow quadrant rotating—quarter gee—with a moiré pattern overlaid showing the shift in orientation.

  She tabbed the hatch open, cradling her tray under one arm, and swung herself through, twisting to land on the opposite wall of the lock, now down. She landed lightly across the dogged-open hatch and faced the bent figure of Morrighon.

  His eyed her warily from his perch on the edge of the hatch—what would have been its top in normal gee—with his legs dangling over the kilometer-long missile tube.

  Raising her tray, she forced a smile. “Company?”

  And knew at once that he never ate in company, unless maybe with other Catennach. A strange expression, akin to revulsion, narrowed his already pinched features. A chill of fear roughed the skin on her upper arms, the same reaction she’d had when she realized he slept alone. Bori just didn’t do that—sleep alone, eat alone.

  “You’re prime crew,” he said. “Why are you awake?”

  She shrugged, and a lie came to her lips as if she’d planned it. “Half of prime crew’s on sick list, and some of the alternates. Captain got me training for backup.” And, before he could say anything, she added, “Watch this.”

  His features tightened. She wondered if he carried some kind of nasty weapon as she twisted over and stretched a hand out toward the console inset. Glancing back doubtfully, she wondered if he would indeed kill her and dump her body right out the nearby lock. Or he could even try his own version of that Karusch’na biznai.

  But he didn’t move, so she tapped out a quick code, and a holo-jac that Lar had installed came to life. Now, instead of the barren dyplast and metal mesh of the catwalk stretching into dimness below them, they sat atop a cliff, watching the sparkle of a waterfall roar past them and fall away into darkness below. The sound was quite good—way in the distance came the muted thunder of the water reaching a river, and the tianqi sent a strong breeze ruffling across their faces, bearing traces of scents from Bori: sweetgrass, oroi, carith-herbflower.

  Morrighon sucked in a long, shuddering breath. His face in the false sunlight was strained, as if he were in pain.

  “You don’t like it?” she exclaimed in astonishment. And she tabbed the control, making the holo disappear.

  Morrighon said nothing, but he seemed on the verge of speech. Tat’s heartbeat marked quick time, lump-lump, lump-lump.

  “I’ve only seen Bori in holos,” he said at last, a raspy edge to his thin voice. “I didn’t think there were any mountains like that.”

  “No,” Tat said. “Not like that. Rivers through hills. Don’t know about desert—left when I was four. All I remember is houses on stilts, and one flood season. Anyway, we like it.”

  She reached again, watching him warily. When he didn’t move, she tabbed the holo on again, and for a long time they sat there, while the false waterfall thundered into a false river far below.

  She said tentatively, “Never saw Bori real-time?”

  “Baby.” His shoulders tightened. His food sat, untouched, on the deck—wall—beside him, but he didn’t seem on the verge of flight.

  “Go ahead and eat,” she suggested, feeling a trifle more confident. Things were, well, a little more normal—whatever normal was, when both of them were confined on opposite sides aboard this crazy ship so very far from their birth planet.

  Once again the peculiar grimace, like pain, deepened the lines in his face.

  Confidence restored, her recklessness also returned. She said, “By the way, we—cousins—thank you. You left us alone—” She waved a hand, meaning the day before, then she gawked in surprise when Morrighon’s eyes widened and he gulped on a laugh.

  “Eh?” she said.

  But he shook his head, snuffling his weird high-pitched giggle. One of his hands flexed convulsively, then he got control of it and drew a long breath.

  “What’s funny?” she demanded. “Meant it.”

  “Because . . . because.” His mouth stretched in a grin like a gigged frog, then he said, “You are ignorant, Ombric.”

  New horror, unlike anything she’d felt yet, suffused her. “You—you aren’t—”

  Now his grin was sardonic, and he was back in control. “Geld us before we enter the Catennach, the Service of the Lords.”

  She gasped, and still he grinned, obviously enjoying, in a twisted way, her shock. “But—if they don’t want you making families, why not contraceptives? Perm ones?”

  “Our choice,” he said. “We live through that, it’s a measure of our strength.”

  A measure of your desire for power through the likes of Anaris. She had no idea whether this conversation was to any purpose she could use—but he was talking. And my stupid reaction makes me look stupid in his eyes. All right, I’ll be stupid.

  “Euuugh,” she said. “Dol’jharians don’t believe in weakness like anesthesia, bet?”

  He snorted.

  She leaned against the wall. “So we were safe, anyway. Nice. But, why you told captain crew would be attacked?”

  “So what would happen would happen.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” she said. “What if more of our bridge crew got duffed, how we make it through this Knot? No sense.”

  “Kept them busy,” he said. “Knew most of them wouldn’t brave our side.”

  Suspicion sidetracked her. “Anaris know Sundiver was coming?”

  Morrighon shrugged, and wheezed a laugh. “They got what they came for, didn’t they?”

  She had to admit the truth of it, but not out loud. Besides, the maliciousness of his tone made her wary again.

  He reached for his food and moved to the transtube. “Emergence coming soon,” he said over one twisted shoulder. “You’d best be ready, don’t you think?” His tone taunted her, reminding her of her original purpose.

  And then he was gone.

  She slumped down, staring into the mesmerizing spray of water falling, falling. And I found out nothing. Now hungry, she tabbed her containers open and munched, her eyes on the sparkling water as she thought back through the conversation.

  Or was it nothing? She had a new insight into Morrighon, and Barrodagh as well. They slept alone, they ate alone, they couldn’t bunny. It has to have been trained into them, by pain and threats and the pursuit of power. So they turn into twisty little parodies of Dol’jharians . . .

  Yes, yes, she was almost onto something, she felt it. Morrighon talked like a Dol’jharian, and he lived kind of like one, but he ordered Bori food. And she remembered that first reaction to her waterfall. Like pain . . . like release from pain.

  That’s it, she thought, scrambling to her feet. Her fingers slapped at the controls, restoring the catwalk to normal, shifting the grav, and erasing the fact that they had ever been there.

  Morrighon—maybe
all the Bori servants—lived perforce like their masters, but she was certain that they made little retreats for themselves, in ways they wouldn’t be caught. Ways the Dol’jharians would scorn to probe. Even in the computer.

  She jumped into the transtube module, sleepiness forgotten.

  GEHENNA

  “Incoming!”

  The sentry’s hoarse shout galvanized the torchlit courtyard into a scurry of sudden activity; soldiers and menials scattered in all directions. Mindful of his dignity, Napier Ur’Comori stepped unhurriedly behind a stone column as a small object arced through the predawn sky over the high castle wall and thumped into the dust nearby with a wet squelch.

  Nothing happened. No subtle, deadly haze of spore-tox, no sudden flaming burst of neverquench, not even a maddened swarm of sting-flies. Above, from the weapons platforms behind the parapet, Napier heard the creak of the catapults swiveling on their platforms, and then the squeal of their unwinding tendon springs as they discharged, mixed with the dull clatter of the stutter-bows.

  “Cease fire!” The sergeant’s voice echoed into the silence as Napier paced back into the courtyard, toward the fallen projectile. Worried eyes followed him from the walls; someone would pay for letting the forces of Londri Ironqueen and her allies get this close.

  The Comori warlord prodded the object fastidiously with one armored foot. It was the head of his legate, Urman of Lissandyr, maggots already swarming in the empty eye sockets and boiling up around the hilt of the broken stone-wood sword protruding from his mouth. At least we still have his Steel; and the loyalty of the Lyssand is now assured—or at least their hatred of the Ironqueen.

  Napier crossed his arms on his chest and looked up at the sky as the first rays of the rising sun seared horizontally through the dusty air above House Comori. The siege had begun. Well, they need hold out only a short time, if the Tasuroi ambassador could be trusted.

  As if summoned by the thought, a waft of greasy fetor assaulted his nostrils. The stumpy, twisted form of Arglebargle approached, the feathers and quills in his nose fetish bobbing in front of his rotten-toothed smile. The Tasuroi was barely a meter and a third tall, but almost as broad, his soiled robes bulging over powerful muscles and an awesome potbelly that didn’t jiggle at all.

  Arglebargle looked back and forth between the tall Comori leader and the head in the dust before him. He grinned even wider. “Nice of Ironqueen to deliver appetizer before breakfast.”

  Napier’s stomach heaved, but he nodded pleasantly to the barbarian. He’d learned very early in their negotiations that the Tasuroi enjoyed baiting inhabitants of the Splash any way they could, even in their naming convention. Refusing to reveal their real names to outsiders, they chose instead for themselves outlandish cognomens. The higher the rank, the more ridiculous the name, and the greater their delight in forcing their hosts to pronounce it seriously.

  But Arglebargle, whatever his true name, wasn’t really joking: the Tasuroi lived far outside the Splash, clustered around small craters left by fragments of the Skyfall where there were sufficient trace metals for human life, and they were cannibals. They boiled their victims in huge iron alloy pots that were the sum total of their wealth, which they never emptied. Napier tried not to think about how five-hundred-year-old human soup tasted—little wonder the Tasuroi smelled so bad.

  “I’m sorry, my lord ambassador,” the Comori leader replied, “but I fear Urman’s mother would object most strenuously.”

  Arglebargle guffawed, assaulting Napier with a blast of searingly bad breath. “Tell old bitch I give her half the brains.”

  Napier turned away in relief as a subaltern ran up and saluted. “Captain Arbash reports a small artillery force retreating from the crossroads. He believes they took casualties.” Her gaze strayed to the Tasuroi, then back to her House’s leader.

  “Very well.” He prodded the head toward the young woman with his foot, noting the caste mark of sterility on her forehead. “Take this away. Give it to Lyssand Urmanmater and tell her I share her grief and her anger.”

  She saluted, picked up the rotting head gingerly by the fringe of hair at the back, and trotted away, holding her arm out stiffly, leaving a trail of squirming bits of insect life dropped from the relic.

  Arglebargle shrugged with exaggerated disappointment. “Too long away from gourmet cooking, I have been.” The elegant term, stuck in the midst of his grunting speech like a gauma-pearl in a midden, reminded Napier again not to underestimate the outwardly absurd barbarian—he had a first-class brain and could speak as well as any legate when he chose to.

  “But not to mind,” the Tasuroi continued. “One of my chatter-bats returned last night; Smegmaniggle and horde will be here in three days, maybe two—then we return the favor, no?” He motioned with his chin toward the wall over which Urman’s head had been delivered. “Tasuroi will eat well!”

  And the Crater’s power will take a blow from which it will never recover. He glanced down as the Tasuroi stumped away, looking around shrewdly at the fortifications. And there will be a surprise for you as well, my greasy little friend.

  Not only that, but last night the chirurgeon had gleefully told him that the Isolate was expecting again, and this time, too, he thought, it would be twins!

  As the actinic rays of Shaitan blasted the top of the wall with brilliant heat, Napier Ur’Comori squinted into the light and breathed in with delight.

  Success would be his, he could feel it.

  SEVEN

  ABOARD THE SAMEDI

  “Emergence.” Lassa’s voice barely rose above the bells that duplicated her announcement.

  Tat squinted blearily at the screen relaying from the bridge. The captain had arranged this feed at her suggestion.

  “Moob!” Emmet Fasthand snapped. The imager surveyed the rest of the crew over his head, so Tat couldn’t see his expression, but his voice was anxious.

  “Scanning.” The Draco tapped swiftly. “No traces.”

  Tat sucked in a breath. Her argus had spotted a code-spatter that correlated with emergence. Morrighon!

  Energized by a burst of adrenaline, she threw a web of code across the addresses the argus pointed to, a gossamer of abstract sensation too fine, she hoped, for detection.

  “Primary plus 35.2 light-minutes, 33 mark 90.” Lassa’s fingers worked. “Navsearch initiated.” Tat could hear the twitter of the navigator’s console as the navcomp began looking for the fourth planet—even if the Gehenna system had a beacon, they couldn’t rely on it.

  Meanwhile, her search, at least, triggered no alarms. Another window on her console pulsed with the rhythmic probing of the keyword generator; she had it cross-linked to the Bori history chip Lar had given her when she told him of her supposition.

  “Sounds right to me,” he’d said, rummaging in his locker and handing her the chip. “No Dol’jharian’s going to go snooping into Bori history—Rifters neither.” His lip curled. “Not this crew, anyway.”

  She looked closer at the window. The search was already crossing over into second-order conceptual associations generated by the neuraimai cognitive mapping circuits. No results yet.

  On the screen, Lassa’s console chirped. “Planet located, system mark 270. Orbital radius 23 light-minutes.”

  “Lay in a course for system 270 mark zero, plus 35 light-minutes,” Fasthand commanded. “And use as many zigs as you need to keep us clear of the Knot. Moob!”

  The Draco’s voice was surly. “I see anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Tat’s attention returned to her work. She was barely conscious of time passing as the Samedi made a series of skips that brought it to the point on the plane of the ecliptic closest to Gehenna, thirty-five light-minutes from the system’s sun. Her stomach burned from too much long-steeped Alygrian tea, the standard neuro-booster for noderunners when they didn’t want to use brainsuck, and her eyes throbbed. But she was close, so close. She could feel Morrighon’s presence.

  Suddenly her console cha
ttered at her and a window bloomed over her work. A surge of adrenaline brought her upright in her seat: one of her trolling phages had snagged a nonstandard scavenger worm. It had to be one of Morrighon’s—he’d camouflaged his workspace by making it invisible to the system’s standard scavengers. But no program could work without reclaiming used space.

  Tat tapped at the keypads. Yes! She’d caught one of Morrighon’s. She threw it into stasis and gingerly began to tease apart its header, wary of suicide code and bit-bombs. As it unwound, she linked the bit-stream to the neuraimai. Now she’d see something!

  The emergence bells chimed again; Fasthand sat upright in the command pod. From the angle of his head, she could tell he was staring at the main screen.

  “Thirty-five out, 270 mark zero,” Lassa announced. “Course for Gehenna laid in.”

  “System’s real dirty,” said Moob. “Over to DeeCee.”

  At the damage control station Galpurus hunched over the console, his narrow hands incongruous at the ends of his bulky arms as they tapped at the keys. He looked up after a time. “Shields can take maybe point-oh-one cee, or a shimmy more. Beyond that we’ll ablate pretty bad, take some heat, even.”

  The strangeness of their situation pulled Tat away from her task—the dissection of Morrighon’s scavenger was largely automatic, anyway. The Samedi would be making a Realtime Run into the Gehenna system at one percent light speed, trusting to the shields to protect it from the dirt and ice which, in obedience to the laws of orbital dynamics, were concentrated in the ecliptic. Nobody ever voluntarily made a Realtime Run: a ship was just too vulnerable in fourspace, and so slow!

  A ting, and Fasthand’s voice came to her flatly through the neural link. (You got anything yet?)

  (I’m on the edge,) she replied, wondering if he could sense her fatigue and excitement over the boz’l. (Soon.)

  (Better be. It’ll take us twenty hours to make the run to Gehenna—if a cruiser shows up, their shields’ll take ’em through a hell of a lot faster. I want those Dol’jharian logos-lickers out of the comp before that.)