Pariah

by W. Michael Gear

  “Oh, her,” Tam told her with a smile. “Bit of a disappointment, actually. Silly little slit. And that was the best Port Authority could do?”

  He’d watched the woman’s alien eyes change, darkening. A chill had run through his bones. “Not even close,” she’d whispered in an otherworldly voice.

  He hoped she’d lose it, shoot him dead in a moment of rage.

  Come on. Get it over with. Don’t drag this out.

  He’d come to grips with the knowledge that he was going to die. Like Artollia, he’d gambled. Lost. Unlike Radcek back in Solar System, these Donovanian maniacs couldn’t dissect his brain. And if they tried to imprison him, it would only be a matter of time before he escaped. Nor was torturing people to death one of the Donovanian’s acceptable means of punishment. They liked things direct. So, what was the hangup?

  Or so he asked himself right up to the moment they wheeled his bound body to the A-7 shuttle. A feeling of disbelief, hope, and amazement filled him as they pushed him up the ramp. It turned to euphoria as Allenovich and Michegan strapped him into one of the seats. Perez seated herself, across from him, her pistol in hand.

  He couldn’t believe his luck as the craft lifted, accelerated like an arrow from Donovan’s gravity well. There was only one place they could be taking him: Vixen!

  “Going to hand me over to Torgusson?” he asked mildly, controlling his features. He didn’t dare allow Perez even the slightest hint of his relief. Once he was aboard Vixen it would only be a matter of time. How stupid could these people be?

  “Got a special room ready for you,” Perez told him, her gaze unfocused as she listened to something in her com.

  To mollify any suspicions the woman might have, he said, “I have to say, looking forward to spending the rest of my life in the holding cell aboard Vixen isn’t the least bit enticing. Better to have shot me back at Port Authority.”

  “One of the suggested alternatives was to drop you in deep forest. Maybe under a nightmare’s mundo tree. Me, I had a better idea. Didn’t take much to sell it to Shig, Yvette, and the rest. Heard that they raised a glass to me in toast when it was announced in The Jewel.”

  You fool. Scary and alien you might be, Perez, but you don’t have the cunning of a twelve-year-old if you’re going to let me loose in Vixen.

  “Five seconds to hard dock,” the pilot’s voice came through the ship’s com.

  Tam counted the seconds down, felt the thump as the shuttle settled and heard the clang as the grapples clamped. Gravity had changed, the shuttle’s lights might have momentarily gone runny. Power flux from Vixen?

  Step Allenovich and Dina Michegan unbuckled from their seats, Michegan checking the hatch. “Powered up. Got pressure. We’re good to go.”

  Allenovich reached down, unbuckled Tam’s restraints, and lifted him onto the dolly. Perez used the straps to bind Tam tightly to the frame.

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little?” he asked. “I’ve got a broken arm. We’re on a ship. What do you think? I’m some sort of magician?”

  They ignored him. But he was used to their disdain. With Vixen back under his command that would come back to haunt them sooner rather than later. It was all he could do to keep from giddy laughter as they wheeled him to the hatch and bumped him over the threshold into . . .

  He blinked, staring in disbelief at the dimly lit waiting room. Lines of chairs, some strewn with trash, stood in rows to one side. A single light panel flickered in the roof. The floor looked filthy, streaked. The very air had a stale and moldy taint.

  “This is . . . Freelander!”

  “Welcome aboard,” Perez told him in a wary voice.

  “This way.” Michegan produced a hand light.

  Allenovich wheeled Tam’s dolly across the room and into the dark hallway, Perez following behind.

  Tam struggled to focus, trying to memorize the route as he was rolled down stygian corridors, the way illuminated only by hand lights. What the hell were they planning? Just going to leave him? That was nuts. He’d have the whole creep-freaking ship to himself. It was like handing him . . .

  He lost the thought as they wheeled him past the hatch, and into the hallway with the spooky script-over-written walls and ceiling. He gaped at the thousands of lines of writing as they they passed. Felt a shiver ghost its way up his spine.

  I remember. They’re all odes to the dead.

  Like a blow it hit him that maybe they were going to shoot him in the room with the eerie dome of bones. Add his to the macabre temple of death. Death? Damn straight, the ship reeked of it. Being shot was one thing. Having his body left in the shadow of that gruesome shrine?

  Get over it. Dead is dead.

  And then Michegan stopped before an open hatch, saying, “This is it.”

  Two of Corporate Mine’s engineers—from his previous visit Tam placed them as Strysky and Bogarten—were waiting beside the hatch. Some piece of equipment rested to one side. Something with cables and what looked like a powerpack.

  Perez released the straps that held Tam onto the dolly, and together she and Allenovich lifted Tam, carried him, bucking and kicking, into what was obviously the astrogation center. The place was illuminated by a couple of light panels. What looked like two dessicated skeletons lay on the floor, the limp remains of uniforms conforming to the bones. Callously, they dropped him onto a bed, an action that shot pain through his broken arm.

  “There’s the hydroponics you requested,” Strysky said, pointing across the room to where plants grew in a series of vats atop com consoles.

  “What the hell is this?” Tam demanded, his heart beginning to pound. “This is insane!”

  Allenovich said, “You wanted to be the boss. The guy at the top no matter what the cost. After what you did to us at Port Authority? You ask me, you’re getting off easy. But then, I never could say no to Talina.”

  Perez placed a pack on the bed beside him, saying, “There’s a knife in the side pocket there. Given your skills, shouldn’t take you more than five, maybe ten minutes to wiggle around, pull it out. After that, it’s only another few minutes, and you’ll be free. Then Freelander’s all yours.”

  With that, Perez, Allenovich, and Michegan each flicked him his or her own wave of farewell before following the mine engineers from the room.

  Tam gaped, taking in the furnishings, seeing the silent command chairs, the dead consoles, piled as they were with duraplast crates, and the curious, home-made hydroponics. The two skeletons on the floor—though nothing more than piles of bone—mocked him.

  A hollow thump made him start. Looking back at the hatch, it was to see it being fitted in place. The sound of a welder could be heard, bead glowing red along the seam of the door as it was welded shut.

  He’d never known panic like what possessed him now. It burst through his chest, liquid, paralyzing.

  Thrashing, heedless of his broken arm, he threw himself at the pack. Found the knife. Dropped it. Finally got it. By the time he’d managed to cut himself free and stagger to his feet, the door had been sealed.

  Tam stood, staring in disbelief. The red beads of weld were fading, darkening to the same gray as the metal.

  Tam blinked. Swallowed hard. His heart was hammering at his chest, his legs turned to rubber.

  Stumbling back to the bed, he sank down, fought back a manaical laugh.

  “Oh, Artollia, if you only could see me now.”

  The silence was like that of a tomb. The air seemed to eat his words. Suck them away into nothingness.

  He saw the first flicker. A shadow of a person, it passed like smoke through a corner of the room.

  Tam jumped when something brushed along his arm. He cried out, seeing nothing there.

  The skeletons on the floor were watching him through vacant orbits in their shattered skulls. Seemed to be grinning.

  “Le
ave me alone!”

  Without the ability to tell time, he didn’t know how long it had been since he was sealed in. Minutes? Hours?

  He threw his head back and began to scream.

  89

  Inga’s tavern appeared to be having a slow night when Kalico descended the stairs, Private Tompzen behind her. She had that feeling of nagging premonition. Like she’d forgotten something, left a light on, or a door open that should have been locked.

  She’d just ridden her shuttle down from Vixen where Torgussen had finished his preliminary survey of Capella I. The captain had determined to work his way out from the closest to the farthest planets.

  Cap I, it turned out, was a hot and dense little ball with liquid-metal lakes on the Capella-ward side and eerie lava tubes, weird caverns, and fantastic spires on the dark side. If it were unique for anything it was the harmonic singing the planet made in Capella’s solar wind and a flip-flopping gravitational field.

  Hitting the tavern floor, Kalico called greetings to some of her people, who were on their scheduled rotation to PA for R&R. Things had been going well at Corporate Mine. Maybe too well.

  Was that the source of the feeling of incipient disaster?

  In all her time on Donovan, she’d become hardened to trouble. Just last week Ituri and Ghosh had barely avoided a core meltdown at the smelter. Something gone wrong in the shuttle reactor they’d cannibalized from one of Freelander’s birds.

  Not that she shared their superstition, but they both insisted that anything that came down from Freelander was haunted. Or at least spooky. Sometimes, when she was around the equipment, she could almost believe it—and more than once had sworn she sensed a presence, caught a fleeting glimpse of something from the corner of her eye.

  Left her wondering how Benteen was doing up on the ghost ship. Talk about a living nightmare.

  “Enjoy the moment,” she muttered to herself as she picked out Talina Perez sitting at her barstool.

  She walked up, gave Inga the high sign for a glass of whiskey, and seated herself next to Talina. “How’s it going?”

  “Last of the fence was installed today. Been a fricking long couple of months. Lot of people are going to sleep better tonight.” Talina glanced at her. “What’s new on your end?”

  Kalico had never grown used to the woman’s changed eyes, or the fact that her cheekbones were more pointed now, giving her face an almost diamond shape.

  “Just got back from a briefing on Vixen.”

  “See Weisbacher?”

  “Just a glimpse. He sticks to his quarters, doesn’t interact with the crew. Lives in a self-imposed exile. Almost furtive, like a rat.”

  “Some people never put the pot back together.”

  “Where’s Dya? Thought she’d be here.”

  “She’s headed out to the Briggs’ place tomorrow. She and Madison have been talking on the radio. Word is that Kylee’s finally willing to see her mother again. Meanwhile, Su’s holding down the fort.”

  “Kylee settling in out there?”

  “She and Tip are like entangled photons, that’s the second son. Madison reports that they’re inseparable. There’s also a rumor going around that the kid’s tight with a young quetzal.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  Talina waited as Inga placed a plate of quetzal steak, a roasted clove of garlic, broccoli, and chili-simmered refritos before her.

  “Inga, bring me a plate of that,” Kalico said. “I haven’t had a decent meal in two weeks.”

  “Coming up.”

  Kalico tossed out a ten SDR coin, adding, “Put Tal’s bill on mine.”

  “What do I make of Kylee?” Talina shrugged. “She’s still carrying a grudge. My hope is that Chaco and Madison can work her through it. Hopefully like I did with Trish after her mom died.”

  Kalico watched Talina’s expression go slack. But it was nothing like the wrenching of the soul she’d seen reflected in the woman’s eyes the day they’d buried Trish.

  After the quetzal rampage there’d been too many funerals.

  “Attrition.” Kalico remembered how nonsensical the term had sounded the first time she’d read it in a report as Turalon came hurtling in-system.

  “This new quetzal Kylee’s supposedly hanging out with? Maybe it’s got some of Rocket in it?”

  “Different lineage,” Talina said. “I got a taste of that line when I was bringing Cap in. It never made much of an impression. Not the way Demon’s line, Rocket’s line, and the Rork quetzals have.”

  Kalico studied the woman. “What do they want, Tal?”

  “Mostly they want to know what we’re doing here. How to deal with us. And then there’s Demon’s line. They want us dead. The more of us, and the bloodier, the better.”

  “Last I heard there has been no sign of Whitey, as if anyone but you could tell one quetzal from the next.”

  “He’ll be easy to recognize. I left him with a broken left front leg. I got at least one shot into his body, too. For all we know, he might be laying dead under some aquajade tree out there.”

  “That’s too good to be true. Maybe after the raid, they gave up?”

  Talina shook her head as she cut a slice of steak. “Quetzals don’t work that way. Think long term. Generations. And Demon has occasionally let it slip. They think the raid was a success.”

  “Demon? They? Is it one or two?”

  “One and many all rolled into one. Forget it. You’d have to think like an ancient Maya shaman. What you and everybody here need to know is that they think we’re all at the beginning of this thing.”

  “How about down at Corporate Mine? What do they want? I’m having people killed.”

  “Everybody thinks I’m a quetzal expert? Kalico, I’ve got a faint glimmer of how these beasts think, and it’s really different than we do. And the parts I think I know, it’s probably because those are the few parts of quetzal logic that make sense to my Earthly primate brain.”

  “Haven’t had any urges to shoot Sian Hmong lately? You know, you were the hero after the raid, but some people still worry about you.”

  “That include you?”

  “Sure. But not in the way you probably think. I worry that you’re too hard on yourself. Especially after Trish’s death. You were in a fricking coma out there. Not your fault that that idiot Weisbacher shot her.”

  “Right. Not my fault.” Talina’s alien eyes narrowed, as if she was completely aware that she was lying to herself.

  “That’s exactly the attitude that worries me. Like you blame yourself for not always being at the heart of things, keeping people safe. You’re setting yourself apart, Tal. You’re not a pariah. These people need you.”

  “Pixom,” Talina said.

  “What the hell is peeshom?”

  “Two souls in the same body in constant opposition to one another. That’s me.”

  “That’s all of us.” Kalico leaned back as Inga set a steaming plate and two fingers of whiskey before her.

  “Eat in health, Supervisor,” the burly woman said before trundling down the bar, her towel over her shoulder.

  They were silent as they ate, Kalico watching the woman from the corner of her eye. Why did she always have to worry that, like a grenade with the pin pulled, Talina was ready to detonate?

  And Trish Monagan’s death had really taken something out of the woman.

  The sense of premonition continued to grow, almost like an itch under her sternum.

  “Here comes Shig,” Talina said without so much as a lift of her head.

  Kalico turned, expecting Shig to be barreling down on them. Instead he was just stepping off the bottom steps clear across the room.

  “How do you do that?”

  “What? Know that Shig’s coming? I just know. How about you? Want to know something?”

 
“Sure.”

  By then Shig was there, breathing heavily. “News just came in.”

  “The Buddha’s bones were found beneath a bunch of tentacles under a mundo tree?” Talina asked mildly.

  Shig scowled at her. “Don’t be crass. Two Spot just got a signal from Vixen. They had a ping on their photonic com. There’s a ship out there. Way, way out there. Like almost a light-year. But it’s ours. And it’s headed our way.”

  Kalico took a deep breath. “And just when we thought it was getting boring around here.”

  EPILOGUE

  Second Elder had been observing on the day the young biped arrived. She was brought to the lineage grounds by One Quetzal Woman in one of the flying boxes. This new one was young, with a different coloring than the familiar bipeds. The hair was yellow, the skin more pale.

  Of particular interest, wherever she went, she left quetzal knowledge. It could be smelled on the breeze, in places where she placed her feet, and more particularly where she squatted and left water.

  She had come to live among the strange creatures who had settled on the edge of Water Runs in Black Canyon.

  On the very first night the girl had sneaked out. She’d explored all around the dwellings where the bipeds sheltered. Third Elder had followed her, and where she’d made water, had tasted the scent of many quetzals from four different lineages.

  That knowledge stunned the entire lineage. What could it mean? The mystery of the yellow girl only deepened.

  On this morning, Third Orange—who had yet to achieve elder status—stalked the young biped and Brown Boy. Brown Boy had been born here. He left the lineage alone, and sometimes food-shared, as did the rest of the local bipeds—a sign of ritual respect to the lineage that demonstrated the bipeds weren’t entirely barbaric.

  To have been chosen to make contact with the yellow girl was an honor for Third Orange, given that the number came from his birth order. His color name had been granted because he agreed to attempt this most daring plan.