He turned slowly at that, staring at her with even more incredulity.
“That’s better… how, exactly?”
When Terian only clicked at him, rolling her eyes, Dehgoies’ jaw hardened.
“And how is it that you remember you have a twin sister all of a sudden?” he said, motioning angrily with a hand, again in a very seer-like gesture. “I thought Galaith and that witch doctor of his made a practice of deleting your sister from your memories whenever they put part of you into a new body.”
Terian shrugged.
Leaning forward lazily, she plucked the bottle of Woodford up off the table, lifting it to her lips and drinking a few more swallows. Gasping a bit, she poured him another half-glass, then set the now mostly-empty container back on the table between them.
“I usually have a few bodies who remember her now,” she said. “I asked Galaith if I could, and he agreed. It helps with the females, frankly. And that way, I can pull on her specifically if I want to. When I know she’s there, as a resource, I can draw on my female side more explicitly… that helps with the males too.”
“The female side they murdered to give you more aleimic structure,” Dehgoies muttered darkly, glaring at him. “Your own sister, and they murdered her. And you sit here and talk blithely about using pieces of her like some kind of sick ventriloquist––”
“She’s not dead,” Terian corrected.
Her voice came out cold, almost dead-sounding.
Dehgoies fell silent.
After a beat, she went on in a harder voice. “She is a part of me, Revi’. She is me. I am her. You might as well say I am dead… for we are one and the same. There is no more Feigran. There is no more Tariana. We are Terian.”
“You are really fucked in the head…” Dehgoies lowered his voice, leaning towards her over the table. “They need to create a whole new category of insanity for whatever you are, brother––”
“Sister,” she corrected in rote.
“Whatever!” he growled.
When Terian clicked at him, shaking her head, Dehgoies frowned, his eyes suddenly serious. After a pause, he spoke in an altered tone.
“Why, Terry?” He sounded at a loss. “Why do you let them do this to you?”
She blinked at him.
The question caught her off guard.
The obvious sincerity behind it also disarmed her.
She leaned back on the booth seat, still studying his face.
“What makes you think anyone is doing anything to me, Revi’?” she said mildly. “I helped come up with this technology. It was my brainchild, in the end––”
“You didn’t have to make yourself your only test subject!”
“We haven’t been able to replicate it in anyone else,” Terian said frowning. “You know that, brother. Everyone else we’ve tried it with has died. In fact, that sister of mine, the one you’re so intent on dismissing as ‘dead,’ is likely the only reason it works for me.”
She watched her friend’s face as he turned away, as he clicked and muttered under his breath, taking another long drink of the bourbon. His long throat moved as he swallowed, but his eyes continued to dart back and forth as he looked out over the dance floor.
“Do you know of many other identical seer twins?” Terian quipped. “If so, do tell, Revi’. I would love to speak to someone in this mythical supply of seer twins that apparently only you are privy to.”
She hesitated at the harder look rising to her friend’s eyes.
“That might not be enough anyway, you know,” she said, in a more subdued voice. “They’ve tried to simulate it with fraternal twins, and the models had the process killing them. They’ve tried growing identicals in the lab in China, but so far none of the test subjects is old enough to try this with.” She shrugged. “Galaith and Xarethe believe there may be something else about me… something unique in my light. Something that allows for this––”
“So you smash it,” Dehgoies growled. “You take that unique, beautiful thing, and use it to make yourself into your own Frankenstein’s monster.” Turning his head finally, he stared at her, his crystal eyes flat. “How many will be enough, Terry? How many do you even have at this point? Do you even know?”
Terry gave him a half-smile. “Someone knows.”
“Someone?” Dehgoies stared at her. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Again, Terian clicked at him, more in annoyance and boredom than anger now.
“Gaos, Revi’. The whole point of this was security. One point, anyway. I can’t have all of my bodies knowing everything. Otherwise it completely defeats the purpose. So some know, yes. Others don’t need to know… just like others don’t need to know about my sister.”
“You’re not even a seer anymore,” Dehgoies said, taking a drink of the Woodford. “I don’t know what the fuck you are, but you’re not a seer––”
“The hell I’m not––”
“You’re not one seer––”
“I never was,” Terian snapped back, leaning over the table. “And you never minded before.” Her voice grew cold. “You never minded me sucking your dick before, either.”
Not far from their table, a few heads turned at her words.
Dehgoies glared at her, downing the last dregs of bourbon in his glass.
Then he rose shakily to his feet.
She thought he would just leave that time, go back to his room, but he seemed to change his mind, stopping once he stood unsteadily over her.
After a bare pause, he leaned down, resting his palms on the table’s polished surface.
He put his face right up to hers, his glass-like eyes serious as death.
“This is going to kill you,” he growled. “It’s going to kill you, Terry… or drive you completely fucking insane. Can you really not see that?”
She clicked at him, rolling her eyes, but he grabbed her arm, hard enough to hurt.
“Ow––” she pouted.
Dehgoies barely hesitated.
“It’s going to fucking destroy you, Terry,” he said.
That time, something in his words made Terian pause.
Frowning, she looked up, meeting that glass-eyed stare.
Before she could decide what she saw, he released her, and straighted back to his full height. Even hammered on bourbon, he moved as gracefully as a panther.
She watched him walk out of the bar.
She saw heads turn, female and male eyes watching him as he walked past. They couldn’t help themselves, she knew. Dehgoies had always been like that. He wasn’t even stereotypically handsome, particularly not for a seer, but he drew eyes like some kind of damned magnetic force, pretty much wherever he went.
Her humor was gone now, as she watched him leave her, yet again.
Instead she felt torn between anger, hurt, frustration with him and his self-righteous, moralizing, hypocritical bullshit… and a desire to fuck with him for real, to plan it out next time and really screw with him, in a way that hit all his buttons.
She knew she wouldn’t, though.
Worse, underneath all that, she felt a deeper, quieter sense of misgiving.
Like the self-righteous prick just maybe could be right.
Thirteen
Confidante
25 clicks east of Rio Negro
331 clicks west-northwest of Manaus
The Amazonian Basin, Brazil
December 1, 1978
Anything from the team? Terian sent.
When I didn’t answer right away, his mind prodded at mine, sharp.
Quay? What does Central say? About the scouts they sent to those hills?
His voice came through strangely loud in my mind, maybe because I now spent most of my Barrier time with infiltrators back at base.
Varlan says they’ve abandoned the river again, Terian added. Is that significant in any way? Have we lost any of them?
I took a snapshot of Varlan’s most recent imprints, sent it to the team back at base, consulted with
that team, mostly without words, and promptly clicked out.
No, I sent. We have lost no one… at least, no one of significance. Tule says the primary military unit now appears to be lagging about half-a-click behind a smaller sub-set.
I glanced at Terian.
A rear defense, perhaps? I ventured.
You mean they know we’re here.
Thinking about this, Terian grunted.
We should assume this, yes, he admitted with some annoyance. And assume they’ve deployed their higher-ranked military seers to keep a closer eye on us. Possibly to cover a planned exit? Assuming they do not continue this asinine campaign of theirs from the jungle, he muttered, staring up at the trees.
Those last few things weren’t really questions.
It is a possibility, sir, I sent, diplomatic.
Show me, Terian prodded.
I flashed the imprints from central at the other male.
The instant I did, I felt an intense reaction from Terian.
Feeling my own aleimi react to the emotional surge from Terian’s light as he tasted one particular set of imprints, I changed the tenor of my light, cutting the rest of the pod off from my next communication.
Even then, I used the subvocal in my headset, not the Barrier.
I knew on a private channel, we wouldn’t be overheard.
“Dehgoies?” I said silently.
“Possibly, yes,” Terian replied, also in subvocal. “It’s a trauma marker. One I mapped a long time ago in Revi’s light. He’s gotten better at hiding it, but it’s pretty distinctive.”
“Can we cut him off, do you think? From the others?”
“Doubtful. They have a lead on us. One they seem determined to maintain.” Terian frowned, glancing at me. “They are protecting him,” he added after a pause. “Can you not feel it? They protect his light, almost as closely as that of the extraction targets.”
“We have helicopters,” I reminded him. “Could we not send someone ahead?”
Terian glanced at me a second time, turning his head to really look at me.
The sun was going down by then. It was getting dark fast under the cover of the jungle canopy. In addition to that dense roof of branches and leaves, thick plants obscured light at our level: hanging moss and vines, bushes and ferns, tall flowering plants, younger jungle trees.
Terian’s amber eyes shone anyway, picking up that faint light from the orange and red sky above the canopy like the eyes of a jaguar.
“No,” he said after a pause. “I think we’re too late. I think he’s felt me, too.”
I frowned.
For some reason, the thought annoyed me.
“So… what?” I said after a pause. “What does that mean?”
I felt the other male hesitate, as if trying to decide if he should say something to me.
I watched him weigh it back and forth.
“What?” I subvocalized. “What is it?”
“It is nothing,” Terian said.
He kept his voice dismissive, but I felt his frown through the Barrier.
“Revi’s light,” he said after a longer pause. “It feels very different. I almost cannot recognize him in it at all.”
“Perhaps it is not him?” I suggested.
For some reason, despite my previous excitement in the thought of catching him, I found the possibility a relief.
“Perhaps we have been wrong in this, all along?” I added. “Perhaps pretending to place him here, within the extraction team, is misdirection of some kind. Or merely an indication of someone with a similar trauma marker in their light?”
Terian didn’t answer.
I could feel his doubt, though.
I continued to follow him through the wet lowlands.
Our team was now a staggered, broken line that reached a hundred yards across the jungle floor. We’d entered another, wetter, denser segment of jungle, one filled with even more birds, monkeys and even jaguars, as well as a significant number of indigenous humans who still managed to eke out an existence away from the rest of their kind.
Karenti was tasked with keeping an eye on that human presence, since she had operated in this part of the world before. It was relatively easy to track their movements at least, since the local tribespeople had no ability to shield and no access to seers who might have helped them.
Even so, I’d been warned not to dismiss their presence entirely.
They were not soft like the humans from the cities.
They also knew of us, of our kind.
For that reason, we were advised to avoid getting too close, or to initiate contact with any of them. They had been credited with killing more than one incautious Black Arrow agent who didn’t respect them enough to keep his distance––or to realize he was being hunted.
Anyway, these weren’t the kinds of humans I had any interest in molesting.
These tribes had done my people no harm.
It was getting dark fast now.
The broad leaves of the trees blocked most of the rays of the sun, and had done, even in the middle of the day, leaving a green-tinted, dim cathedral of filtered light. Now that small bit of light crept so rapidly into darkness, the change seemed to happen in seconds.
I knew there would never be enough stars to penetrate those branches, nor likely much light from the moon, no matter how full.
Already, I was using my aleimi to compensate.
Luckily, so many living things surrounded us, using the glow of their living light made navigation easy.
The broad-leafed trees around me let off a vibrating, rosy glow.
Some of the smaller plants let off more yellows and purples, shades of pale green, blues, and even whites––but I saw that rosy tinge sharper than all the rest. Here and there, my sight picked up animals that lived and hung from those tree branches as well.
Being forced to operate more or less nonstop from the Barrier would make our team more visible to other seers, of course.
Even with the protection of the mobile construct, I couldn’t help feeling that visibility as a vulnerability out here, given who and what we chased.
I assessed the landscape around us anyway, using my seer’s sight.
I didn’t have much choice.
Smallish, round hills stood to the northwest of us, just north of the Rio Negro.
A few hundred miles further, real mountains lay between this part of Brazil and the neighboring countries, but mostly, this stretch of land was flat, covered in rainforest––some of it so dense, we had to hack our way through the greenery like the local humans did, using steel-bladed machetes. Of course, we could have used more sophisticated tools, but the pod was doing its best to maintain physical quiet, at least where we could.
“How close are they now?” I asked Terian. “Have we caught up at all?”
“Close,” Terian said, still using sub-vocals. “Very close, brother. They’ve slowed down significantly.”
“Is Varlan sending you that?” I said, looking for the imprint.
“Yes,” Terian said. “Has intelligence found a reason for the slow-down?”
I receded through those structures to ask the seers back at base.
“No,” I said, a beat later. “Not conclusively. They have a few working theories.”
“Which are what?”
I glanced at him.
“The pregnant female. Most of their theories have to do with her. The team of military infiltrators protecting her has stopped several times, in a way that may indicate someone in the group is suffering from ill health… or, possibly, in the very late stages of a pregnancy. The speculation is that her Adhipan guards may have been forced to make physical accommodation for her––perhaps by carrying her via a stretcher or some other mechanism.”
Seeing Terian frown, I made my voice more formal.
“They believe the slow-down is due either to the pregnant female’s immediate health condition, or a concern that her condition may soon change. That, or another on their
team has been seriously wounded, and they are unable to pull them, or re-route them from the main group. In any case, base advises that it does not feel like an intentional slow-down, but one of emergency. They feel more fear in the group than before. They also feel more chaos, in terms of their overall plan.”
I hesitated before adding,
“…Our quarry has reconfigured their deployment to compensate, including what you have already noticed, in their positioning of some of their more military-oriented seers in a smaller tracking team behind the main group. Tule agrees with you that this is likely a defensive posture. Based on your Barrier imprints, he believes Dehgoies is likely with that secondary team. He may even be leading them.”
“Do they believe she is giving birth?” Terian said. “Is that why they came here so ill-prepared? Is she at the end of her term?”
I nodded, as much to myself as the other seer.
“It would make sense,” I admitted, thinking aloud. “It could explain why they came here without arranging for adequate air or ground support… or designing an exit plan with any degree of rationality whatsoever. Perhaps they located her within Guoreum only days prior to launching the operation to extract her…?”
“Hours, brother,” Terian said, frowning in the dark as his amber eyes flashed at me. “From what I have seen, they deployed from Asia mere hours after determining her location at the camp. From all indications, this was a very hastily planned operation. The working sight ranks of the seers in the extraction team, combined with the sheer number of obvious mistakes they have made, can only indicate that they launched this with little to no planning.”
I felt his light grow harder, even as emotions in his aleimi spiked.
“Revi’ is the most meticulous planner I know,” he added, soft. “He was known for this… for mapping out extensive contingencies in the most routine of operations.”
I felt a surge of anger leave Terian’s light.
“…If he is indeed with them, as we suppose, Revi’ would never conduct anything so sloppy willingly, not without a very good reason. That leaves me with two possibilities. Either Revi’ was brought here under coercion… which I think both of us can agree is unlikely… or he came willingly, in which case, there was a very good reason for the lack of planning. That tells me they were desperate. That tells me there was significant urgency in obtaining this particular female in a very short window of time.”
Trickster Page 15
