“We’ll have to keep these two in mind,” subvocalized Xoraya to Mikal. “They could be allies—perhaps the third one, also. Shyla, and Tere,” she drew the boy’s name from somewhere, most likely his mind, and Mikal shook his head.
“You shouldn’t invade his privacy,” he told her.
“Oh, you Lamanians, and your dratted privacy!” the Xeonsaur snapped. “We’re trying to stop atrocious crime here; privacy be damned!”
Mikal mentally grinned at her. It was probably best to let that one go.
To his surprise the handsome man accepted Tere’s word.
“Well, far be it from me to mistreat The Boss’s valuable rats,” he said, his eyes sliding insolently over Shyla’s youthful figure.
The girl had swallowed her tears, and had tightened her lips into a thin line, but her hands were still on the mag-lev stretchers.
“Put them in the back room with the rest of The Boss’s valuable pieces,” the Mage said casually, turning back to the animal carcass which had been the object of his attention when the procession had arrived in the laboratory. “The funny-looking boy who insists on looking after the lizard can look after these husks, too. Unless one or more of you three want to babysit comatose bodies.”
“I wouldn’t mind helping the funny-looking boy,” Shyla whispered to the boy who had come to her defence. “He’s a nicer person than most of the other people in this building, or anywhere around this place. And the work wouldn’t be that hard; it’d be easier than toiling for that nasty woman on the country Estate. I don’t care if I ever see—or eat—another tuber, to be honest.”
“The trouble with working here is that this where Mosse is,” Tere responded in a low voice. “He gives me the creeps, especially when he looks at you. And one of the other chattels gossiped to me that Gorsh gives him girls, and when, and if, they come back from his quarters there is no life left in their eyes. They can barely scratch out an existence in the tuber fields, never mind do anything more demanding. I don’t want that to happen to you Shyla; you’re my friend, and from my world.”
The door which they pushed open at the back of the laboratory was a heavy one. Mikal and Xoraya entered the room beyond it as their physical forms did, and it was a good thing that they had no control over those, because the first thing Xoraya did was let out a loud, anguished, mental scream.
“Oh my Xanthus!” she howled. “What have they done with my Xanthus, my dear Life-Mate?”
She flew over to where a motionless Xeonsaur body lay on a narrow cot, looking emaciated. There was no astral form hovering over or around it; its stillness looked ominous.
Beside it, however, sat a teenage boy with rather unusual facial features. He had a wide mouth, a sharp, long nose, and a jutting, strong jaw. His hair was a mess of black curls, carelessly barbered some time ago, and he had beautiful, expressive, deep-set eyes. He had been studying a scholar’s tablet, but the entrance of the bodies on the stretchers with their caretakers seemed to have disturbed him.
Only, it was not just they who had disturbed him. He had apparently heard Xoraya’s mental cry, for he directed his gaze to where her astral body was, next to Xanthus’ comatose form. He was aware of her distress; his facial features reflected it.
“He’s not dead, if that’s what you think,” came the boy’s thought. “He’s resting, inside his physical form. They’ve kept him drugged for so long that even someone as strong as he is has begun to falter.”
He rose from his chair and walked over to the stretchers, to look at the bodies on them.
“That’s why Gorsh has snagged you, another Xeonsaur,” he added mentally, as he gazed upon the comatose forms. “But how did the Peace Office get caught again?”
“Xoraya and I allowed ourselves to be captured,” Mikal subvocalized from his astral position near the door. “The idea is to start a process of eroding Gorsh’s holdings from within. We were hoping to get help at that from Xanthus and you.”
“Ah, you’re outside your body, too! And able to communicate!”
The boy’s face broke into a grin, to the mystification of the three caretakers.
“What you so happy about?” asked the male teen who had not spoken until now. “You glad to have more half-dead bodies to take care of?”
“Oh, Nic, don’t be an idiot!” snapped Shyla. “He’s glad to see us all, of course. You’d be glad to see anyone, wouldn’t you, Murra, excepting the miserable dork next door! Stuck here all the time with just a man in a coma for company, I don’t know how you can stand it! Everyone says that you’re so good-natured, but even you must have limits!”
Murra broke out laughing; it was a nice laugh and a welcome sound in this gloomy building, to Mikal at least.
“Well, with two more bodies to be looked after, maybe they’ll send you in more often with supplies, and to give me a hand,” he said to the girl. “That would make life much more pleasant!”
“Oh, Tere and I are hoping to be assigned to this detail,” Shyla answered brightly. “The only problem with it, is having to walk by that cuss of a Mage, Mosse, every time we go back and forth!”
“I’d rather hoe tubers than look after nearly-dead people,” muttered Nic sourly.
“You’re welcome to the tuber ground,” responded Tere sharply. “And the bitchy woman in charge of it.”
Even Mikal caught the emotions of fear and anger that accompanied the youth’s thoughts of Milla. Gorsh’s wife was not popular with the slaves who had to work for her, apparently, but that was more food for the dark entity which made the stone building its central home, and, apparently, spilled out from it, and portions of which could be detached, and attached to objects such as ships. Was Mosse, the Mage, the one manipulating the entity for Gorsh’s benefit?
“Yes, at least partly, Xanthus and I do think so,” came Murra’s answer to Mikal’s question. He was reading Mikal as well as Xoraya did. “With Xanthus weaker, and unable to navigate through time as often, or as far as he did earlier, Gorsh is more dependent on the murk creature to block ESP signals. So he indulges Mosse, to keep him here, and content.”
Mikal and Xoraya shared a look as an involuntary shudder passed through the boy’s body at the thoughts.
“With you here, Lady Xeonsaur, perhaps Gorsh will go back to trawling through time and space for more slaves,” Murra added. “Although I am told that he has a glut of them. At least one of his markets has fallen apart.”
Xoraya’s astral form shimmered with a wicked grin.
“I am called Xoraya, Murra,” she thought at him. “And I won’t be doing much navigating for Gorsh, I’m afraid, so maybe it’s a good thing that he has plenty of merchandise on hand. I don’t have Xanthus’ talent for navigation; the best I can do is short time hops on a planet surface, taking only another mind, or a few, with me. I can haul a big ship through time for only moments, if that.”
“You have deceived him then, into letting you into his inner sanctum,” Murra replied. “And Gorsh thinks that he can erode the mental barriers that protect the secrets in the Peace Officer’s mind, by keeping him under the mind-tangler, whereas what has happened is that his resistance to psychic energies is what has come apart.”
“You are aware of much, young friend,” Xoraya subvocalized.
“Xanthus and I have had lots of time to communicate,” Murra explained. “What I can understand of his knowledge, I now know.
“But what of my friend, Kati, Peace Officer? She helped you to escape. Did she make it out—somewhere—alive? She promised to get help. Are you two part of that help?”
Mikal was certain that Murra must have been aware of the burst of emotion that the mention of Kati’s name aroused in him.
“We are a part of that help,” he subvocalized. “She will be coming to this world, too, by a different route, and awake, and capable. She has not forgotten her promise, and, being a very determined, and able woman, she will do wonders yet.
“By the way, my name is Mikal, and I feel that I already kn
ow you, I have heard so much about you from Kati.”
Murra was smiling as he set about to help the trio move the new bodies onto gurneys which were taken from a large closet at the back of the room. There was equipment to make the care of comatose bodies easy; Mikal noted that Xanthus’ bed was equipped with such equipment as well.
Looking at the resting Xeonsaur, however, he had some serious misgivings about this stage of the enterprise. The most high-tech of life-sustaining technology could do only so much with bodies kept drugged for a long time. They needed to put an end to what Gorsh was doing before he, Mikal, and Xoraya had lost their physical resilience, and while Xanthus Hsiss still was capable of functioning.
CHAPTER TEN
“Do we know where we’re to land on this world?” Kati asked Lank and Ciela over breakfast of porridge and dried fruit.
The teens were gobbling up the meal in spite of its simplicity. Kati was playing with her bowlful, trying to get a swallow down every now and then. The monotony of the dried, frozen, and canned fare had started to affect her appetite, in spite of the daily regimen which she kept in the exercise room. Maybe the Crystal Planet could provide them with some fresh greens, she hoped. Oh, and eggs and milk would be heavenly, although she did not really dare hope for something like that, never mind fresh meat.
“Eat your brekkie, Ship Mama,” Ciela admonished her. “You need to keep your strength up.”
Kati managed two spoonfuls while Lank and Ciela watched her, then Lank answered her question:
“Zeke and Darla had a habitual stopping place, and we’ve determined from the latitude and the longitude that it’s on the smaller of the two continents north of the equator, approximately mid-continent, and on the shore of a large lake. There appears to be a settlement of some kind, nearby, don’t know if I’d call it a city exactly, or even a town.”
“It definitely correlates with Darla’s information, but her notes are pretty cryptic when it comes to who or what we’ll be dealing with,” Ciela added. “I’m not quite sure why she was so scanty with the info about the people she and Zeke traded with.”
“Considering what happened to her and Zeke, I’m not surprised,” Kati muttered, and choked down another bit of the porridge.
“It’s also possible that she wasn’t noded when she was travelling with Zeke,” said Llon, who was downing his breakfast without any trouble. “I think that if that was so, it would explain why the attackers let her live, especially if Zeke did have a node. They would have considered her a Wilder and a non-entity.”
“She was definitely noded when we met her at Makally’s,” Lank objected.
“She probably would have been implanted at a healing centre, once she made it back to civilization,” Llon explained. “That would have been done to aid in the healing process, to make the Healer’s task easier.”
Kati nodded. She had taken part in a healing in the Second City of Lamania, with a Shelonian Master Healer. The first thing the Healer on duty had done, after calling for the Master Healer to deal with a difficult case, was to implant the patient with a translation node.
“So she would have had to organize the information that she gave us from her pre-nodal memory at some time,” Lank said, nodding. “She may have decided to pick and choose from them, making nodal notes of only what she thought was the most essential.”
“That’s my thinking,” Llon agreed. “The Fringe planets and space stations don’t have access to nodes the way the Federation worlds do, but what they do get are usually reserved for purposes like healing. Unless, of course, a particular stratum of society corners them for their own use.”
“Exhibit A of that being Vultaire as it was when we landed there,” Kati muttered. “Even though it was a Federation World.”
She choked down the last of her porridge. She would have time to clean up the galley before she was needed for the next step in their adventure.
She would have to be front and centre when they left The Spacebird Two to meet with whomever it was that they would be trading. There was no getting out of that duty—not that she was anxious to do so. In fact, she was plenty curious about the inhabitants of the Crystal Planet, and of what, and how much, they were willing to give for the Shelonian electronics which, according to Darla, they were keen to obtain. As the Acting Leader of the Expedition, it was her job to conduct any and all negotiations that might be necessary. She found the thought somewhat scary, but also very exciting.
“I’ll come with you,” Llon promised. “Though I’m certain that you’ll do what needs to be done, and you’ll do it well.”
*****
“So. You are the one in charge, then, and you are not opaque.”
Where had the thought-thread come from?
The four adventurers had come out from The Spacebird Two onto a grassy meadow which sloped gently towards a strand of a sand beach, beyond which a blue lake sparkled in the light of the planet’s sun. A gentle breeze had ruffled Kati’s hair, and as she had drawn into her lungs clean, unrecycled air, she had marvelled at the paradise-like surroundings. Lank had drawn her attention to a large gathering of people a short distance away, on the grass, on the beach and even in the water. He and Ciela had noted them already while in the ship, wondering whether or not the gathered folk had somehow intuited their imminent arrival, and had got together to welcome a Free Trader ship. Even though its like had not come around for at least a decade and a half.
“They’re very delicate-looking people,” Lank had murmured in an undertone, and Kati had nodded in agreement.
Very, very delicate-looking, indeed. Slim, short—sprightly, Kati termed them in her thoughts. On her birth-world they would have been called fairy-like.
She had been admiring them with her vision tuned to high, and listening to the lilting speech patterns with ears at eavesdropping strength, when the mental comment had broken into her consciousness. She had expected to have to spend some time allowing the Granda to pick up the language before being able to communicate, yet here she was, already being hailed.
“Could I perhaps know who is addressing me?” she asked mentally, directing the question to whoever had initiated the contact.
A small, lithe woman separated from the crowd, and walked towards Kati and her companions.
“Ah,” Kati intoned as she waited for the woman to approach.
Kati could not begin to guess at the woman’s age. She was child-sized to her, but adult-shaped, if slight in a fashion that made the Earth-woman, in spite of her own slimness, feel big and awkward. She was dressed in a shift of a sort, made of some gauzy material layered to create a non-see-through effect. Her light-coloured hair had been pulled back and gathered up, to reveal pointed ears, another pixie, or fairy, trait. Her facial features were on the sharp side, a pointy nose and a chin, topped by high cheekbones and a wide forehead. The eyes were remarkable, the irises shimmering with blue, green and gold highlights.
Kati’s companions were sighing at the sight, too.
“She’s marvellously beautiful,” Ciela murmured at Kati’s side.
“In an ethereal way,” Lank added, on her other side.
Llon, behind Kati, said nothing, but with her ESP Kati could sense that he, too, was admiring this marvel of—non-humanity? Kati dared to probe the woman very gently, the way Murra had taught her, long ago, to approach others mentally. To touch lightly, rather than penetrate into the person’s thought patterns. It was only polite to approach others thus, Murra had told her, and courtesy was all-important in mental exchanges. Murra, himself, had been a practitioner of the art, and Kati had very much appreciated it in him.
“You are of surprisingly light touch for a large-bodied creature,” the woman thought at her. “In spite of the clumsy oaf which has grafted itself to your nervous system.”
The Monk snarled, and Kati let out a giggle.
“I had an excellent tutor when I came into my PSI powers,” was all that she answered, however.
“So is there a conversa
tion going on here?” Ciela asked curiously, hearing Kati’s giggle, but Llon took hold of her shoulder and shushed her.
“Let Kati communicate,” he muttered in an undertone to the girl who immediately controlled herself, and lapsed into silence.
“The young ones are filled with the exuberance of youth,” the woman commented, eyeing the crew with Kati, “and the older man is...odd. I’d almost say that he is not of this physical universe.”
“And you’d be almost right,” Kati subvocalized with a smile. “He is, of course, of this physical universe, now, while he is guiding us. As he has told us, he has to respect the laws that prevail in it, even as the rest of us must.”
“Yes, of course, that would be so.
“And you have come to trade with us for the crystals that we produce, following in the footsteps of the man who died, and the woman who did not.”
It was a statement, not a question.
“You know that he died, and that she survived?” Kati could not keep the surprise from her thought.
“Of course. We can follow the paths that the molecules of our crystals travel. And because we can, this is the last time we will let long pieces of what you call lace crystal to leave our hands and our planet. They have been ill-used, as you know, having removed a knife made of such from the hands of a would be rapist and murderer, and having refused to allow the man to die after that creature inside of you tried to use it as a murder weapon.”
Well. The bit about being able to follow the molecules of their crystal was not merely an idle boast, apparently.
“Then you realize that I need a few long pieces to bait our opponents on Wayward?”
“Yes. Which is why we will hand over a few, this one last time. After this, it’ll only be lace crystal pieces intended for communications uses, and amber salt crystals that will leave this planet.”
Kati had a definite sense that the woman, and her compatriots, could make the proviso stick, even in the face of the most determined syndicate. Suddenly the woman in front of her did not seem fragile at all, but immensely strong, in spite of her delicate stature. Also, all her people were the same, and Kati knew that she was standing where she was, with permission, and for a reason. These people had, for some purpose which she could not fathom at the moment, chosen to involve themselves in the doings of the Federation and the Fringe planets. They were willing to help Kati and her cohort to clear the taint which had grown too strong on Wayward.
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 23