by S. L. Viehl
“Five times. Teresa, her heart is strong and more than meets the demands the baby places on it. She’s not sick, or diseased, or injured.” William handed her Dair’s chart. “Unless you can think up a test I haven’t performed, or a valid reason to keep her under observation, I have to discharge her.”
“If she dies, I’ll have nothing,” Teresa muttered.
“If she were going to die, she’d have done it when she fried herself saving the Skartesh.” He patted her shoulder. “I’ve got to make rounds in post-op. Have the nurse signal me if you need me.”
Teresa went to the tank and told Dair the good news. “I don’t want you discharged if you’re still not feeling right.”
“I feel good.” Dair climbed out of the tank and cleared the water from her gills. “I’m getting fat, though.” She spread her hands on the growing bulge of her abdomen, and then glanced over Teresa’s shoulder and grinned. “Onkar.”
Dair’s mate came to embrace her in his arms. They began speaking in clik so rapid that Teresa couldn’t follow the conversation.
Why should I? She doesn’t need me any more than Dairatha does. Like he said, it’s none of my business.
Teresa withdrew and left the aquatic treatment center alone. Work had been piling up for the past seven days at the URD as well as her home lab; T’Kaf had sent her several signals. She’d sent regular reports on Dair to the pod via Burn or Onkar, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back underwater.
“I know you’re in there somewhere, Dr. Selmar.”
Teresa dragged herself out of her thoughts to see Noel Argate standing in front of her and waving a hand in front of her nose. “Noel. What a surprise.”
“Everything all right with Jadaira?”
She nodded. “She’s with her mate. Mayer is going to spring her; he can’t find anything wrong.”
“Good, then you’ll be free to help me with the last of the prep work at the inlet.” Noel indicated a military glidecar waiting at the curb. “I’ll drop you over at your place so you can pack a few things.”
Teresa frowned. “What prep work at what inlet?”
“I’m sorry. I thought your lab chief would pass along what we were doing. We’re almost ready to go after a ’shrike.”
She stared at him. “Almost ready. Noel, we only discussed a few possible methods of capturing a mogshrike. That was where we were last week, when Dair fell ill.”
“I consulted with your people during your absence, and we agreed on what would be the best method.” He made a face. “I’m sorry, Terri, but I’m not going to be here much longer, and I couldn’t see waiting.”
“No, of course not.”
“I’m not here on vacation. My superiors want regular progress reports. There have also been a bunch of new ’shrike sightings.” Noel gave her a searching look. “Listen, once the military gears start turning it’s not easy to go back to a standstill. It doesn’t matter. If you want me to call a halt to it, I will. This is still your turf, Terri. You have the last word.”
She rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips. “How many new sightings?”
“About fifty. Twenty or so rogues, the rest were multiples of twos and threes. Mostly young ’shrikes.” His mouth flattened. “They come to scout first, don’t they?”
She nodded. “If there’s a reliable food source, then they come back to hunt.”
Jadaira was going back into the water today, and nothing would keep her out of it. Teresa couldn’t stand the thought of her child and her grandchild dying in the teeth of one of those monsters.
“What do you want me to do, Terri? I can signal my people and call them off the site now, if you like.”
“No. Let’s go to my place and you can bring me up to speed.”
Noel had accomplished an amazing amount of work over the last week. Using one of her station monitors, he pulled up a satellite shot of the inlet and the work going on there.
“The reef extension walls are in place under the surface; they’ll lie flat under a layer of silt until the ’shrike is well inside our surround. Reinforced observation posts have been staggered around the perimeter every hundred yards, and those will be manned by my troops. I have a hover pod for your scientists so they can observe without any risk to themselves.”
“Very efficient.” And much better than she could have done with her people and limited resources. “Once we have it inside, the extensions are raised and charged?”
“With contact charges only,” Noel said. “The trapped ’shrike will have to swim right into the extensions to trigger a feed burst from our onshore power plant. I didn’t want to take the chance of running that much current continuously; it would kill everything in the vicinity.”
Teresa had to admit he was doing everything as she had asked—with respect for safety and life—but she still wasn’t convinced his idea would work.
“Right. So we get the ’shrike in, and trap it, and keep it in.” She gestured toward the inlet image. “How do we get it out of the water and transport it seventy kim over land and dump it in the study tank at Burantee?”
“That’s the beauty of being a part of the Allied League of Worlds,” Noel said, and put a new image up on the screen. “We have a lot of worlds to contact and consult with on our problems.”
The image at first didn’t make sense. It hovered over remote mountainous terrain the way a transport would, but the design was unlike anything Teresa had ever seen.
“We turned our transport problem over to our intersystem jaunt experts, and they suggested we use this baby.”
“It looks like a big, floating dandelion.”
“That’s not too far off the mark, actually. It’s a P’Kotman life flyer, constructed from one of their giant wind plants. The League tells me the natives use it to retrieve and transport the injured from remote areas of P’Kotma.”
Teresa studied the dimensions. “You’re telling me that that thing is made out of organic botanical materials?”
Noel nodded. “Part of it is fossilized, but the lower half is living tissue. It actually envelops the passenger and can carry up to forty metric tons of weight.”
“A ship that eats people.”
“It would if you left the people in it long enough, but the short flight time doesn’t give it the opportunity to start the digestive process. Instead, it holds the enveloped victim suspended inside a harmless gel, along with a small bubble of oxygen so it won’t smother. The P’Kotmans are delivering one that has been trained to hold liquid atmosphere so our ’shrike can keep breathing.”
“How do you get the victim back out of it?”
“An even exchange.” Noel put up another image of the bizarre vessel hovering over a pen of benign-looking herd animals. “The ship will release the victim for something fatter and weaker and stupider, like these casein-orwfs.”
The alien ship was starting to make her sick. “I don’t want to see a vid of it, okay?”
“Sure. I have a couple of computer models of how we’re going to bait the ’shrike. If you’d like, we can run them on the tri-dim down at the URD this afternoon—”
“No.” She knew if she saw Dairatha that she would call the entire operation to a halt and plead for him to take her back. The work was more important, and she wouldn’t give her ex-mate the satisfaction of seeing the wreck he had made of her.
“Terri?”
“Not at the URD,” she said in a more normal tone. “We’ll work out of Burantee Point until we have your onshore installation up and running.”
“I should also tell you that as soon as we began work at the inlet, the ’Zangian Elders filed a protest with the Colonial Council,” Noel admitted. “They’re fighting to block the capture.”
Dairatha had been busy. “The Elders can do whatever they like. I have it on good authority that the council is tied up with the Peace Summit and they won’t get back to regular business for several days.” She turned to him. “I want a ’shrike in captivity before their grievance goes b
efore the council, and I want to keep them from killing it if they are granted the block. How do we swing that?”
“Good question.” Noel considered it for a few moments. “We can start hunting in two days. If the Elders sway the council, my people will transport the ’shrike we catch off-planet.”
“That violates most of the stuff written in the colony charter.”
He shrugged. “This region is still under full military jurisdiction. Your council can file a grievance with quadrant. I’ve heard that, with the war demanding so much time and attention, civilian grievances are pretty backlogged. Should only take, oh, two or three years for theirs to be reviewed.”
Teresa sat back in her chair. “We’re really going to do it, then. We’re going to catch this nightmare.”
“No, Terri.” Noel took her hands in his. “We’re going to put an end to it.” He leaned forward and brushed his mouth over hers.
She hadn’t been touched by a Terran male since she had left the homeworld, Teresa thought. She hadn’t been kissed at all since Noel had left her. ’Zangian males used their mouths for feeding or biting. Dairatha had marked her more than once in passion, but he couldn’t do this.
She had missed this. Missed Noel.
That foreign thought made her jerk back. What was she doing? This man was the biggest reason she had left Terra. Him and his lies. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t agree to that. But I’ll wait for an invitation next time.” He tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “You can’t stop me from thinking about you. We had some wonderful times together, Ter.”
“You think you can jump back into my bed now that it’s empty?”
“It’s always been empty, hasn’t it?” His expression turned quizzical. “Your ’Zangian lover could never sleep with you.”
“He was my mate, and you’d better just shut up right now.” She got to her feet. “I have some signals to send. I’ll meet you up at the point in a few hours.”
Noel left without making a fuss, and Teresa studied the images of the inlet surround and the P’Kotman carrier vessel for a long time. She could see a thousand ways in which things could go wrong. The ’shrikes were excellent breachers; something would have to be done to keep them from jumping over the tops of the reef extensions. Then there was subduing the monster—they still didn’t know if a standard neuroparalyzer would have any effect on it—and assuring the study tank was durable enough to contain it.
She lifted a hand and touched her mouth, which still tingled from Noel’s kiss, and then glanced at one of the few photoscans she hadn’t torn off the wall. It was of Kyara, Dair’s biological mother, who had died giving birth to her. Kyara had been her best friend.
So had Dairatha, even if he never had slept in a bed with her.
Teresa tapped her console and signaled the FreeClinic. “Put me through to Dr. Mayer, please.”
Burn terminated the relay from the surface and swam out of the communications room to meet with three members of the ’Zangian detachment preparing to go on duty. “Dair is out of the hospital. They say she and the pup are fine.”
“Of course they are.” Loknoth tugged at the collar fastened under his gillets. “Dair doesn’t have to swim in a full dress uniform through ship corridors all day and night.”
Burn understood their discomfort, but the delegates all wore clothes, and the colonial administrator wanted the ’Zangians to blend in. “You can strip as soon as you’re off duty.”
“How much longer will we have to be here, Sublieutenant?” Gharain, one of the youngest males, asked. “I think I’m starting to chafe in unmentionable regions.”
“Until they make peace or kill each other,” Curonal guessed. “I’d wager that big female could easily dust both of those mouth-breathers.”
“I don’t know,” Loknoth said. “They move fast when they want to, I know they haven’t surrendered all their weapons, and she can’t breathe in their air locks.”
“They’ll make peace and then we’ll go home.” Burn felt like knocking his detachment’s heads together. No wonder being in command made one surly—everyone did nothing but complain—and he intended to apologize to Dair in person the minute he saw her. He turned to Loknoth. “What do you mean, they haven’t surrendered all their weapons? I personally disarmed every Ninrana before they boarded.” What a happy task that had been, too—Burn had thought at one point the fierce desert-dwellers might attack him en masse.
“Did you search that sea of fabric they wear?” the other male asked, referring to the Ninrana’s voluminous robes.
“You know I didn’t.” Burn would have, but the ’Zangians weren’t permitted to touch any of the delegates. “But I scanned them thoroughly.”
“They’re carrying them,” Loknoth insisted. “I’ve seen them tuck their hands under the fabric a number of times when they’re angry or startled. Not to take whatever they have under there out, but to be ready to. You know, the same way we’d bare teeth at big shadows in the current.”
“The only things that don’t show up on scanners are organics or body parts,” Curonal put in. “I doubt they’re going to beat someone to death with a spare arm or a weed.”
Burn remembered the platform upon which the Ninrana had sacrificed the ship crash survivors they found on their world. It had been made of bone. So had parts of their dwellings.
Bone was one of the oldest tool-making materials among land-dwellers, Burn recalled from his Academy training. Among primitive species it was still used to make darts, clubs, even blades.
“Lok, signal the council and see if you can have the no-search order reversed.” To Curonal and Gharain he said, “You two patrol the stern corridors. Keep alert and signal me at the first sign of trouble.”
Burn went directly to the conference area being used by the summit delegates. The main entrance was guarded by two ’Zangians, whom he stopped and briefed before moving on to the adjoining observation chamber, where the delegates’ aides and members of their entourages waited during the talks.
Everything that was being discussed could be heard over audio panels, and several monitors had been posted that showed the delegates in the summit room. The room had been divided in half, with an air lock for the land-dwelling Skartesh and Ninrana, and a water tank for the ’Zangians and Ylydii.
Burn listened to the voice of the intermediary drone, which was still reading off the various clauses and demands filed by each of the delegates. He couldn’t understand why they had to use such frilly speech when the issues were so simple to understand. The Ninrana wanted water, because their planet was dying. The Ylydii wanted order and some control over what happened within their system. The Skartesh wanted their own colony away from K-2 because they couldn’t adapt to the climate. The ’Zangians simply wanted the fighting to stop and everyone to live together in peace. In his mind, these were all reasonable requests.
It was what they wanted for each other that created the conflicts. The Ylydii wanted harsh trade restrictions placed on the Ninrana, who weren’t too particular about how or from whom they got the water they so desperately needed. The Ninrana in turn thought that one of the aquatic species should provide them with water without any conditions attached. The Skartesh thought the ’Zangians should be happy to deed one of K-2’s moons over to them, since the aquatics could never live on them. The ’Zangians thought the Skartesh’s cult should be outlawed and the species strictly supervised until it was fully deprogrammed.
Ana Hansen spotted him and left a group of Skartesh to come over to the panel used to communicate between the air and water locks. “Sublieutenant, is something wrong?”
Administrator, some of the Ninrana delegates may be armed, he typed on the panel pad so that she saw the words appear on the vid screen only. Out loud he said, How are the talks progressing?
Ana’s mouth tightened before she played along with his ruse. “As well as can be expected, considering the trouble we’ve had with the translation eq
uipment.” She used the pad to type, Smuggled weapons past the scanners?
Weapons made of bone wouldn’t register, he typed back. Some of the delegates were looking at them, so he discontinued using the keypad and wiped the screen. Shall I advise security on-planet about the problem?
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Sublieutenant.” As Ana said that, she moved her head in a barely perceptible nod. “Chief Norash should only be consulted when there is something that might compromise safety for the delegates and their parties.”
Understood, Administrator.
“How much longer must we listen to this machine?” Ambassador Urloy-ka demanded from the air lock side of the summit room. “Every day we spend talking, my people and planet die a little more.”
“They will survive the week, Ninrana,” Bataran said. “My people have suffered for months, and will keep suffering every minute we stay on the surface of K-2.”
The Ninrana made a strange, hissing sound. “You would compare your pelts shedding to my species’ coming extinction? We need water or we will die. Do not think that because we agreed to these talks that we will be denied. We will have water, or we will use whatever means are necessary to take it.” He plunged his hand into his robe.
Burn exchanged a quick look with Ana and went to one of the door panels leading directly into the chamber.
It is vital that we each detail our concerns, so there can be no misunderstanding between our species,
Nathaka mu Hlana said. There is a priority of need to be established, but no planet or people can be regarded as more important than another. We are all equals here.
Carada gave the other aquatic a pitying look. You three are males. Here or on Ylyd, you can never be equal to me.
Ana Hansen slipped into the room and took position in the center of the air lock. “Delegates, forgive my intrusion, but I would remind you of your agreement to set aside personal animosity as well as status for the duration of this summit. What you decide here will determine the future of this system, and the millions of beings who inhabit it. Antagonism and threats will never serve them the way tolerance and cooperation can.”