The Cobra Trilogy

by Timothy Zahn

  And was the mojo question one of the driving forces behind the village-city hostility she kept hearing about? If Qasama's city-based leaders had finally decided that having mojos around was dangerous, it would make sense for them to press the whole planet to get rid of them.

  Except that the villages couldn't do that. Whatever the long-term effects caused by mojos, it was an undeniable fact that they made uncommonly good bodyguards . . . and people out in the Qasaman forest definitely needed all the protection they could get. Jin could attest to that personally.

  So what it seemed to boil down to was that the Moreau Proposal to seed Qasama with spine leopards had indeed undermined the universal cooperation the Cobra Worlds had found so frightening . . . at a price of making the world even more dangerous for its inhabitants.

  There are always some whose primary goal is the destruction of all others, Daulo had said. Had the Cobra Worlds been guilty of that kind of arrogance? The thought made her stomach churn.

  Someone nearby was calling for a Jasmine Alventin . . . Oof—that's me, she realized abruptly. "I'm sorry, Daulo Sammon—what did you say?" she asked, feeling her cheeks redden with embarrassed anger at the slip.

  "I asked if there was anything you'd like to buy," Daulo repeated. "You lost everything in that car wreck, after all."

  Another test? Jin wondered, feeling her pulse pick up its pace. She had no idea what a normal Qasaman woman might have been carrying into the forest on a bug-hunting expedition. No, he's probably just being polite, she reminded herself. Don't get paranoid, girl . . . but don't get sloppy, either. "No, thank you," she told him. "I had nothing of real importance except clothing; if I may take some of the clothing your family has lent me when I go, I will be sufficiently in your debt."

  Daulo nodded. "Well, if something should occur to you, don't hesitate to let me know. Since you mention it, have you given any thought to when you might wish to leave?"

  Jin shrugged. "I don't wish to impose on your hospitality any longer than necessary," she said. "I could leave today, if I'm becoming a burden."

  Something flicked across his face. "If that's what you'd like, it can be arranged, of course," he said. "You're certainly no burden, though. And I'd counsel, moreover, that you stay until you're fully recovered from your ordeal."

  "There's that," she admitted. "I'd hate to collapse somewhere between Azras and Sollas—to find assistance elsewhere as caring as the Sammon family has been would be too much to ask."

  He snorted. "You've been taught the fine art of flattery, I see." Still, the statement seemed to please him.

  "Not really—just the fine art of truth," she countered lightly. Except for the grand lie I'm currently feeding you about myself. The thought brought heat to her cheeks; quickly, she looked around for something to change the subject. Beyond the market to the northwest was an oddly shaped building. "What's that?" she asked, indicating it.

  "Just the housing for the mine elevators," he told her. "It's not very attractive, I'm afraid, but my father decided it had to be replaced too often to justify proper ornamentation."

  "Oh, that's right—your father mentioned a mine last night," Jin nodded. "What kind of mine is it?"

  Daulo threw her a very odd look. "You don't know?"

  Jin felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. "No. Should I?"

  "I'd have thought that anyone planning a trip would at least have learned something about the area to be visited," he said, a bit huffily.

  "My brother Mander did all the studying," she improvised. "He always took care of . . . the details." Unbidden, Mander Sun's face rose before her eyes. A face she'd never see again . . .

  "You cared a great deal for your brother, didn't you?" he asked, his tone a little softer.

  "Yes," she whispered, moisture blurring her vision. "I cared very much for Mander."

  For a moment they stood there in silence as the bustling marketplace crowds broke like noisy surf around them. "What's past cannot be changed," Daulo said at last, reaching down to briefly squeeze her hand. "Come; let me show you our lake."

  Given the overall size of Milika, Jin had envisioned the "lake" as a medium-sized duck pond sandwiched between road and houses; and it was a shock, therefore, to find a rippling body of water fully three-quarters of a kilometer long cutting across the Sammon section of Milika. "It's . . . big," she managed to say as they stood on the spoke-road bridge arching over the water.

  Daulo chuckled. "It is that," he agreed. "You'll notice it goes under the Great Ring Road over there and extends a way into the Outer Green. It's the source of all the water used in Milika, not to mention the obvious recreational benefits."

  "Where does the water come from?" Jin asked. "I haven't seen any rivers or creeks anywhere."

  "No, it's fed by an underwater spring. Or possibly an underwater river, tributary perhaps of the Somilarai River that passes north of here. No one really knows for sure."

  Jin nodded. "How important, if I may ask, is a nearby source of water to the operation of your mine?"

  Looking at the lake, she could still feel his eyes on her. "Not particularly," he said. "The mining itself doesn't use any, and the refining process is purely catalytic. Why do you ask?"

  She hesitated; but it was too late to back out now. "Earlier, you mentioned people who sought others' downfall," she said carefully. "Now I see that, along with the mine, your part of Milika also controls the village's water supply. Your family indeed has great power . . . and that sort of power often inspires others to envy."

  She counted ten heartbeats before he spoke again. "Why are you interested in the Sammon family?" he asked. "Or in Milika, for that matter?"

  It was a fair question. She'd already learned about all she really needed to about Qasama's village culture, and would at any rate be moving on within a day or two to scout out the cities. The political wranglings of a small village buried out in the forest ought to be low on her priority list. And yet . . . "I don't know," she said honestly. "Perhaps it's out of gratitude for your help; perhaps because I'm growing to feel a friendship for your family. For whatever reason, I care about you, and if there's any way I can help you I want to do so."

  She wasn't sure just what reaction she was expecting—acceptance, gratitude, even suspicion. But the snort of derision that exploded behind her ear took her completely by surprise. "You help us?" he said scornfully. "Wonderful. A woman with no family?—just what help do you propose to give?"

  Jin felt her cheeks burning. Count to ten, girl, she ordered herself, clamping down hard on her tongue. You're sliding way out of character. "I'm sorry," she said humbly through clenched teeth. "I didn't mean it that way. I just thought—well, even though my family's gone, I do have friends."

  "City friends?" he asked pointedly.

  "Well . . . yes."

  "Uh-huh." Daulo snorted again, gently, then sighed. "Let's just forget it, Jasmine Alventin. I appreciate the gesture, but we both know that's all it is."

  "I . . . suppose we do."

  "All right. Come, I'll take you across to the Outer Green."

  Gritting her teeth, she lowered her eyes like a good little Qasaman woman ought to and followed Daulo across the bridge.

  Chapter 19

  The courtyard outside Daulo's suite was dark, his late supper over and the dishes cleared away; and with the stillness and privacy came thoughts of Jasmine Alventin.

  He didn't want to think about her. In fact, he'd gone to great pains to immerse himself in work over the past few hours in order to avoid thinking about her. He'd ended their walking tour of Milika early in the afternoon, professing concern over her weakened condition, and gone directly back to the mine to watch the work on the shoring. After that, he'd come back to the house and spent a couple of hours poring over the stacks of paperwork that the mine seemed to generate in the same volume as its waste tailings. Now, having postponed eating so that he wouldn't have to face her over a common family meal, he'd hoped the fullness of his stomach would conspire w
ith the pace of the day to bring sleep upon him.

  But it hadn't worked that way. Even while his body slumped on its cushions, numbed with food and fatigue, his mind raced ahead like a crazed bololin. With, of course, only one topic at its forefront.

  Jasmine Alventin.

  As a young boy the fable of the Gordian Knot had always been one of his favorites; as a young man one of his chief delights was the solving of problems that, like the Knot, had driven other men to despair. Jasmine Alventin was truly such a problem, a Gordian Knot in human guise.

  Unfortunately, it was a Knot that refused to unravel.

  With a sigh, he rolled off his cushions and got to his feet. He'd been putting this off for almost a day now, hoping in his pride that he could get a grip on this phantom without artificial assistance. But it wasn't working that way . . . and if there were even a slight chance that Jasmine Alventin was a danger to the Sammon family, it was his duty to do whatever was necessary to protect his household.

  His private drug cabinet was built into the wall as part of his bathroom vanity, a reinforced drawer with a lock strong enough to discourage even the most persistent of children. It had been barely a year now since his acceptance into this part of adult society, and he still felt a twinge of reflex nervousness every time he opened the drawer. It would pass with time, he'd been told.

  For a long moment he gazed in at the contents, considering which would be the best one to use. The four red-labeled ones—the different types of mental stimulants—drew his eye temptingly, but he left them where they were. As a general rule, the stronger the drug, the stronger the reaction afterward would be, and he had no particular desire to suffer a night of hellish dreams or to spend the coming day flat on his back with vertigo. Instead, he selected a simple self-hypnotic which would help him organize the known facts into a rational order. With luck, his own mind would be able to take it from there. If not . . . well, he would still have the mental stimulants in reserve.

  Returning to his cushions, he emptied the capsule into his incense burner and lit it. The smoke rose into the air, at first thin and fragrant, then increasingly heavy and oily smelling. And as it enveloped him, he took one more try at untying the Gordian Knot that was Jasmine Alventin.

  Jasmine Alventin. A mysterious young woman, survivor of an "accident" which no one had witnessed and which therefore no one could confirm. A suspiciously timed arrival at Milika, coincident with a flurry of activity by the Yithtra family's lumber business and fresh metals orders from the Mangus operation. Her speech that of a city-educated business mediator, yet her manners more befitting some ignorant outcast from polite society. And the things she said in that cultured voice—

  Even with the artificial calmness of the hypnotic wrapped like a smoky cocoon around him, Daulo still gave muttered vent to his feelings about this one. I want to go with you, she'd said—as if going out in the dead of night to take care of a razorarm was the sort of thing women did all the time. Let me help you—totally laughable coming from a lone woman with neither family nor estate. It was as if she lived in her own private world. A private world with its own private rules.

  And yet she couldn't be dismissed simply as that sort of feeblebrained scatterhead. Every time he'd tried to do so she'd casually done or said something that painted an exact opposite side of her. A half-dozen examples came to mind, the most obvious being her casual understanding of the consequences of having Milika's lake on Sammon family territory. Even more disturbing, she had a distinct talent for deflecting questions that she didn't want to answer . . . and a talent like that required intelligence.

  So what was she? Innocent victim as she claimed? Or agent sent in by someone to cause trouble? The facts fell almost visually into neat organization in front of Daulo's eyes . . . without doing any good at all. The Knot remained tightly tied; and the only fresh conclusion he could find at all was that, totally against both his will and his common sense, he was growing to like her.

  Ridiculous. He snorted, the sudden change in his steady respiration pattern bringing on a short fit of coughing. It was ridiculous—totally, completely ridiculous. Without position, she was at the very least beneath his own social status; at the very worst, she might be coldly using him to try and destroy everything he held dear.

  And yet, even as he gazed mentally at the list of points against her, he had to admit there was still something about her that he found irresistible.

  Just what I needed, he groused silently. Something else about Jasmine Alventin that won't unknot. So what could it be? Not her features or body; they were pleasant enough, but he'd seen far better without this kind of threat to his emotional equilibrium. It certainly wasn't her upbringing; she couldn't even make a simple sign of respect properly.

  "Good evening, Daulo."

  Startled, Daulo twisted around on his cushions, blinking through the haze to see his father walk quietly between the hanging curtain dividers. "Oh—my father," he said, starting to get up.

  Kruin stopped him with a gesture. "You weren't at your customary place at evening meal tonight," he said, pulling a cushion toward his son and sinking cross-legged onto it. "I came to see if there were some trouble." He sniffed at the air. "A hypnotic, my son? I'd have thought that after a full day a sleep-inducer would be more appropriate."

  Daulo looked at his father sharply, the last remnants of the hypnotic's effects evaporating from his mind. He'd hoped he could rid himself of this obsession with Jasmine Alventin before anyone else noticed. "I've been rather . . . preoccupied today," he said cautiously. "I didn't feel up to a common meal with the rest of the family."

  "You may feel worse tomorrow," Kruin warned, waving a finger through one last tendril of smoke and watching it curl around in the eddy breezes thus created. "Even these mild drugs usually have unpleasant side effects." His eyes shifted back from the smoke to Daulo's face. "Jasmine Alventin asked about you."

  A grimace passed across Daulo's face before he could stifle it. "I trust her recovery is proceeding properly?"

  "It seems to be. She's a very unusual woman, wouldn't you say?"

  Daulo sighed, quietly admitting defeat. "I don't know what to think about her, my father," he confessed. "All I know is that I'm . . . in danger of losing my objectivity with her." He waved at the incense burner. "I've been trying to put my thoughts in order."

  "And did you?"

  "I'm . . . not sure."

  For a long moment Kruin was silent. "Do you know why you're living in this house, my son? Amid this luxury and prestige?"

  Here it comes, Daulo thought, stomach tightening within him. A stern reminder of where the family's wealth comes from—and the reminder that it's my duty to defend it. "It's because you, your father, and his father before him have toiled and sweated in the mine," he said.

  To his surprise, the elder Sammon shook his head. "No. The mine has made things easier, certainly, but that's not where our true power lies. It lies here—" he indicated his eyes "—and here—" he touched his forehead. "Material wealth is all very good, but no man keeps such wealth unless he can learn how to read the people around him. To know which are his friends and which his enemies . . . and to sense the moment when some of those loyalties change. Do you understand?"

  Daulo swallowed. "I think so."

  "Good. So, then: tell me what form this lack of objectivity takes."

  Daulo waved his hands helplessly. "I don't know. She's just so . . . different. Somehow. There's a . . . perhaps it's some kind of mental strength to her, something I've never before seen in a woman."

  Kruin nodded thoughtfully. "Almost as if she were a man instead of a woman?"

  "Yes. That's—" Daulo broke off abruptly as a horrible thought occurred to him. "You aren't suggesting—?"

  "No, no, of course not," Kruin hastened to assure him. "The doctor examined her when she was brought in, remember? No, she's a woman, all right. But perhaps not one from a normal Qasaman culture."

  Daulo thought that over. It would go a l
ong ways toward explaining some of the oddities he'd observed in her. "But I thought everyone on Qasama lived in the Great Arc. And besides, she claimed to be from Sollas."

  "We don't live strictly inside the Great Arc," Kruin shrugged. "Only a short ways outside it, true, but outside nonetheless. Who's to say that others don't live even further? As to her claimed city, it's possible that she was afraid to tell us her true home. For reasons I can't guess at," he added as Daulo opened his mouth to ask.

  "An interesting theory," Daulo admitted. "I'm not sure how it would stand up to Occam's Razor, however."

  "Perhaps an additional bit of new information would save it from that blade," Kruin said. "I've been thinking about the accident Jasmine Alventin claimed to have been in, and it occurred to me that if it happened near Tabris someone there might have either heard the crash or found one of her companions."

  "She couldn't possibly have come that far," Daulo objected. "Besides, we checked all the way along that road."

  "I know," Kruin nodded. "And I trust your findings. But in such a case as this I thought extra confirmation might be a good idea, so I sent a message there this morning. Someone did hear a sound like a large and violent crash . . . but not near the road or village. It was far to the north, several kilometers away at the least. In deep forest."

  Daulo felt his mouth go dry. Several kilometers due north of Tabris would put the accident anywhere from five to ten kilometers from the place where Perto had found her on the road. The suggestion that she might have made it from Tabris proper—a full twenty kilometers of forest road—had been ludicrous enough, but this—" She couldn't have survived such a trek," he said flatly. "I don't care how many companions she started out with, she couldn't have made it."

  "I'm afraid that would be my assessment, as well," Kruin nodded reluctantly. "Especially through the heightened activity the bololin migration a few days ago probably stirred up. But even if we allow God one miracle to get her out alive, there's an even worse impossibility staring at us: that of getting a car so far into the forest in the first place."