“I don’t want to live like this!”
“Then you may leave.” Hearing her own words shook her. Ailim couldn’t believe they came from her mouth. Her duty to her Family, to guard it and lead it, came before everything else. But her temper had frayed with the incessant demands of the resident Family.
Cona paled. Her mouth fell open, but nothing emerged.
Ailim found her voice first. “We must take desperate measures or the Residence will be lost. I’m expecting everyone to help. If that is beyond you, go. You may set up your own household, as other D’SilverFirs have done, and live on your monthly GrandMistrys Noblegilt and a Flair career. One tenth of those funds will be taken for upkeep of the estate.” She continued in her judicial mode, laying out the options, refusing tumbling emotions. “Or you may disassociate yourself from the Family and your Flair income will be entirely yours. You haven’t pledged your loyalty to me. You are free.” She waved a hand.
Cona stomped from the room, trailing images of a tortured Ailim in her wake, outlandish mean-spirited plots. Her thoughts leaked, She will pay for insulting me.
A noise jolted Ruis awake from his first night’s sleep in the Captain’s Quarters. He blinked his eyes open to an odd light that never existed under the Celtan sun, Bel. The blue of the walls held an unusual tint. His heartbeat picked up pace.
With the inrush of his waking breath he tasted a metallic tang and his nostrils flared at the equally alien scent. Sterile. Absent of any life. The only natural odors were his own and Samba’s. He didn’t like it.
He strained to listen, only his breathing broke the quiet.
“Good morning, Captain Elder,” Ship said in deep male tones, spacing the words in a strange rhythm and accent.
Ruis jerked upright in the bed. “Ship?” His voice sounded hollow. It didn’t matter that the furniture was trimmed in wood, or that fabric quilted his bunk and the chair he saw in the den, Ruis knew metal surrounded him. It shouldn’t have set off a creeping apprehension, but it did.
“Yes, Captain. We are implementing your initial orders. Additional priorities can now be accepted for future restoration of Our systems.”
The statement nearly distracted Ruis from the realization that the fine hair on his body stood on end. He looked for his clothes he’d folded on a nearby chair. They were gone. “What happened to my clothes?” The morning harshness in his voice should’ve faded by now, but his throat was tight with anxiety. He reached for Ailim D’SilverFirs’s softleaf that he’d tucked near him while he’d slept.
Her scent had triggered his body into full arousal, leading him to impossible imaginings of them together. The fantasies had kept him awake long into the night. In the wee hours it didn’t matter that he hung under the threat of execution, an outcast, and that she was a Judge. All that had mattered was that she was a woman and he was a man and they fit together as if they were legendary HeartMates. He snorted. To find your HeartMate you needed great Flair. He’d never know one. But he couldn’t imagine any woman who could please him more than D’SilverFir.
He shook his head at the stupidity of his nocturnal fancies.
The Ship recited the systems that needed correction.
“Ship. What happened to my clothes?” The thoughts of Ailim had diverted him, but now the tension he’d awakened with rushed through him stronger than ever.
“We requested crew member Samba place them in the cleanser. They will be ready tomorrow. The cleaning system is being overhauled.”
Ruis looked for Samba. He didn’t think she was in his quarters, but she’d slept near him all night. The idea sent warmth through his increasingly chilled body. “I want clothes, now.” He recalled the antique texts he’d studied and the most important phrase. “That is a direct and immediate order.”
A panel slid open across the room from him, showing an outfit of tunic and trous that looked more feminine than his own breeches and shirt. Neither the trous nor the tunic contained much material. The tunic ended at his waist and had no collar. The trous had no belt. Even the color, a dark off-blue, irritated him. He couldn’t go outside dressed that way.
This was his new home. He should be fascinated, exploring the Ship, learning its secrets. Yet he hurried to get out as soon as he could. Of course the rumors of madness after a few hours in the Ship were superstition, Ruis reassured himself. He wasn’t mad. He hadn’t planned on departing the Ship for a while, but a wave of uneasiness rose in him, making his skin tingle and his insides quiver.
He had to go out. Into the light he’d been born in, into the scents of Druida and green Celta. Again the image of the delightful D’SilverFir came to his mind and he grabbed at it for comfort. He needed to see her.
“Get me something green. Or brown. Now.”
When he threw back the covers, they slithered across his skin like nothing made in Druida. Ruis shuddered.
He stood, naked, and walked into the den, then leaned over the desktop that was a maze of buttons and lines, some lit, some dark. With a forefinger he traced a circuit, frowned, knowing he should recognize it. He sank down into the chair and opened a drawer in the right pillar of the desk. There he found books and some delicate tools of a foreign material nestled in a flat box with a clear cover. Carefully he reached for the container.
Even in the den, the most protected place of the quarters, Ruis heard the main doors swoosh open. Cat sounds and meows came to his ears. I’m back!
The desktop was cold under his left hand, as if it were made of glass, but it wasn’t. The drawer by his right hand was shaped subtly different from any on Celta.
The air wasn’t right.
He was panting again, and his teeth hurt. Even while he’d been concentrating on the technology, he hadn’t relaxed. His jaw ached as did the tendons in his neck. The trepidation that crawled through his belly intensified.
Ruis shot from the chair and into the bedroom.
Samba sniffed at the open panel displaying the same poorly cut tunic and trous, this time in a nondescript brown. Ruis grabbed them from a hanger and put them on.
The clothes weren’t constrictive, just more form-fitting than he liked; the stretchy material was unexpectedly warm and comfortable.
Samba sniffed at his ankles and sneezed. Funny smell.
“Yes.”
He turned from the closet and sat on the bed. For some cat reason, last night Samba had retrieved his liners from his boots and put them on his bed. He wrinkled his nose at the foot smell, but pulled his last remaining Celtan clothes on his feet. Then he stamped into his scarred boots and walked to the door. Samba trotted beside him. Where are we going?
“Out,” he replied, unused to having anyone ask anything of him. An old phrase came to mind about something giving you the “creeps,” and he noticed his goose-fleshed skin. The Ship gave him the creeps.
Samba’s nose twitched. I have been out. Much gossip.
Ruis scowled. “You went outside the Ship?”
Samba lifted her muzzle. Ship food is not good. Ship says I catch mice as a duty. I don’t eat mice.
“Ah,” Ruis coughed to cover his laughter. “You have to be careful; those who know you’re with me think we’ve left Druida.”
Yesss. I ate crunchies at Clovers, friends of Ashes who feed ferals. No one saw me.
Ruis knew nothing of the middle-class Clovers except that they were one of the few Families on Celta with high birth rates.
“Gossip, eh? Tell me about Ailim D’SilverFir.”
She got loan for Family. Bucus Elder appointed his nephew Donax Reed as financial adviser.
Ruis couldn’t prevent an involuntary jerk at the sound of Bucus’s name. “Donax isn’t Elder blood. He’s my aunt Calami’s blood nephew.”
You are Bucus Elder’s nephew by blood, Samba said.
Ruis looked down at his scarred hands. “He did this to me as a boy.”
Samba’s eyes slitted. Bad man.
Ruis rolled his shoulders, refusing to think of his childhood. “Tell
me more about Ailim D’SilverFir.”
She is new SupremeJudge. Samba sat on plump haunches and lifted a paw to lick it. She in JudgmentGrove today.
Hearing of D’SilverFir cheered him. JudgmentGrove was directly in line with the Ship, two kilometers away. The old grove had been planted with Earth trees to frame the Ship in the distance, something that Celtans preferred to forget. Now he had a destination and a goal in mind after escaping the Ship. “We’ll go see how she handles her duties.”
Samba stood, planted her front paws and stretched luxuriously. It’s cool outside. You need a cloak.
Ruis stopped before he exited his quarters and scowled down at his clothes. “Damn.”
Turning his head, he said, “Ship, I need a cloak.” It would provide protection from the weather and hide his clothes.
“Cloak?” Ship asked.
If he couldn’t get something to put over his outfit, he’d have to be very, very careful and lurk in Landing Park until he could persuade himself to return to the Ship.
“There is one ‘cloak’,” Ship said. “An experimental light-bending cloth, designed by Our last Captain. Due to the unique properties of the material, it was decided to keep the pattern simple and shaped in the style of a cape.”
“Light-bending?”
“It was constructed to make the wearer nearly invisible.”
Better and better. Satisfaction infused Ruis. “Great.” He nodded. “Please provide it.”
Now the machinery showed its age with a clanking and a clash of parts that made Ruis wince. He wondered where the problem was and if he could fix it manually, then took a deep breath to even his breathing again. Ruis went back to the bedroom closet. After staring for a moment, he caught a glimpse of cloth. He reached out and touched a tissue-thin handful of material. Its texture felt more like scales than weaving. Without further thought he swirled it around him.
Samba jumped back, hissed. Your body gone!
“No, I’m here,” Ruis said.
She stalked around him. The cloak fell to just above his ankles.
“This will be very useful.” He’d have to watch the wind, though.
I don’t like.
“Sorry.” He felt slits inside the cloak and fumbled to insert his arms through them. When he lowered his arms, the cloak fell in deep folds, hiding even his hands. He pulled the roomy cowl over his head. His hands twitched and Ruis knew he had to get away.
They passed through the quarter’s doors and Samba trotted ahead. A few moments later Ruis walked towards the northeast portal of the Ship. “Open the doors, please.”
Nothing happened. Ruis stopped, all senses on alert.
“Ship, open the doors.”
Silence.
“That is a direct and immediate command. Open the doors.”
After a long moment, the doors slid open a millimeter. A crack of gray light slanted across the floor, and the scent of Celta, heavy with the fragrance of autumn, filtered in.
“What’s wrong?” Ruis asked.
A slight chittering came. A whisper of sound.
“Ship!” Ruis demanded.
The voice that sighed in answer was not the authoritative masculine one Ruis had heard before, but more like a thousand small voices merged into one. A tentative voice. “People come and they go away again,” it soughed. “They don’t stay.”
Pity rose in Ruis, but his apprehension spiraled since the opening between the doors was even too small for Samba.
His throat tightened. The Ship was an outcast, too, and knew it.
“You came. You wanted command rank. You brought a pet. You listened. You acted. Now you go. So soon. Will you return? I cannot take the chance.” The mournful sounds whistling in the airlock must come from a breeze of the dying year outside, not from some burgeoning sentience inside.
Ruis licked dried lips. “I command you to open the doors!”
Nothing happened.
Five
As Ruis stood in the Ship’s airlock, hair rose on the back of his neck. Anger turned his vision red. Remembering old diagrams, he pivoted and banged a fist on an indentation in the wall of the airlock.
“No!” cried the Ship.
Switches and buttons showed in the control panel, along with a large red oval hand-pull that would fit around his fist. Ruis thrust his fingers into it and pulled a little, testing it.
“NO!” The Ship’s shriek reverberated through his head.
He tightened his fingers on the handle. “I am the Captain of this Ship,” he managed as pain speared his ears. “You will let me come and go as I please or I will institute all the manual overrides of your systems.”
“Agreed!” The doors flew open. All the pressure pounding at him ceased. Ruis shuddered, then closed the control panel. In the background, almost beyond his hearing, he thought he heard sobbing.
Outside showed the last of the green summer grass, faded from its former glory. Trees blazed with bright leaves, purple and maroon and rust and red and orange and yellow and pink. He cherished the sight. The big-boled trees of Landing Park, and the other groves and parks would hide him. Buildings and alleys would provide shadows for him to slide into.
Ruis didn’t need to look at the Ship. It surrounded him. Big and steely.
He lingered in the airlock. If he stayed in the city, outside of the Ship, he’d die. And if he left Druida and the machines he had restored, the craft he’d acquired after long hours of patient work, he would leave the best part of himself behind—his passion and his one contribution to his own world. His soul would die.
The atmosphere of the Ship had returned to what he’d experienced since waking. It seemed to seethe with bitemites. “There’s something in the environment of the ship that disturbs my nerves. It probably irritates other Celtans as well.”
The Ship hummed as if with new determination. When the voice came, it was smooth and male once more. “We have never been told this. We have no orders for observation of visitors.”
Ruis blinked. “You have orders to observe, now.”
“Yes, Captain. However, under standard operating procedure, we have been monitoring your life signs since you have arrived, particularly the slight energy field that surrounds you, and will compare your vital statistics to our database. We will also review previous vids of visitors to Our museum rooms. An initial hypothesis is subsonic vibrations. . . .”
Ruis blinked. The Ship worked fast. Behind him, he thought he heard whirring, and some sort of rush of air that made the muscles between his shoulder blades twitch. A non-sound pierced his head, dizzying him. Samba screeched. He reached out and grabbed a metal handhold for support. “Stop that!”
“Subsonics,” Ship said, “some vibration that affects humans more than felines.”
“Continue with your tests to find the problem. I’m leaving,” Ruis said. “I’ll return near sundown.”
As he walked from one tree to another in the empty park, he thought of Ailim D’SilverFir.
Yesterday evening she’d come to him. He couldn’t prevent satisfaction, and other rare emotions—joy, hope—from singing in his veins. That she’d come to see him again after his banishment was a sign that she cared about him, no matter how little. And she was the first person he could remember to care for him as an individual and not an object of pity.
He smiled. He knew nothing about the ways of men and women in courtship except what he’d overheard now and again in low-life taverns. Men boasting or complaining or venting anger about the women in their lives. Ruis only had women when his physical need was great and he wished to pay the price.
D’SilverFir had promised to help. Perhaps she would. Hope. It was such a new and tender emotion, so light and effervescent bubbling through him, that he couldn’t bring himself to crush it. For once, he’d let himself indulge in optimism.
The walk to JudgmentGrove was peaceful. Ruis kept to meandering pathways through a series of parks and groves. Only the Downwind area of Druida was crowded together without
greenspace. He stood still behind a tree when he saw others, women with children, brisk walkers and runners. When he came closer to JudgmentGrove he took great care, pulling his cloak around him. His blood fizzed with adrenaline at the risk and the push to take chances. He found a tight way between tall bushes that were planted just beyond the staggered four-deep trees on the west end of JudgmentGrove.
His mouth twisted and hands clenched as he saw the line of bright purple Flair denoting a closed sacred circle. The band was just a meter and a half from where he stood. Bitterness rose through him, coating his mouth.
If he touched the pulsing band of light, his Nullness would break it, alerting the guardsmen to his presence. He’d be caught and executed.
The pulsing bond before Ruis seemed to mock him. Even in this, the basic religion of Celta, he was nothing.
He looked through the Grove and the atmosphere grew wavy before him. He knew what that meant, too, and folded his cloak around him, against the cutting autumn breeze that could lift it and reveal him. A weathershield had been invoked.
He saw people a few meters ahead who had come, like him, to watch the new SupremeJudge. But they were inside and could hear her words, while random phrases came to his ears. They were inside, able to see her and hear her and be warm.
He was outside, ignored, outcast, and cold.
Ailim settled her morning cases with speed and ease. She used minor Flair, reading surface thoughts and emotions todetermine guilt, not forced to intrude otherwise. Once or twice she adjusted the punishment based on her detection of contrition, but otherwise followed standard judgments proposed within the Laws.
By noon recess she realized that her new bailiff, Yeldoc, had set the docket in order of difficulty and knew she could trust the fussy little man.
Most of the nobles who’d come to watch—and judge—her left when the circle was opened for midday break. But the representatives of the five FirstFamilies who had voted against the loan to D’SilverFir stayed.
Second nature had Ailim using Flair to check on the state-of-mind of the gathering. Everywhere she’d visited on her circuit rounds held a distinct cultural bent, and she factored that into her rulings. The murmuring of those milling in the grove was accepting and appreciative.
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