by Jay Aspen
‘We’re on the outskirts of Kar,’ announces Severin, although he must know I’ve already figured that out. ‘Alis gave me the coordinates for the safe house. It’s still within relay range of Kar’s main cable link to Merkaan. They’re already on our secure network so I’ve messaged them that we’re about to arrive.’
The way the powerful planetary resonance blocks transmission airwaves can be damned inconvenient at times. According to history, it also got so disturbed by all the digging and disruption of laying the cable between the twin cities, the proposed cable expansion got permanently cancelled. But then, with only 7.83 hz on the colonists’ homeworld, they had no chance to use the resonance for all the advantages that Pangaeans have. So I guess the inconvenience is worth it. I couldn’t imagine living without it.
Like being half-blind and deaf...
Severin makes a tight descending turn that would be the envy of an experienced military pilot and drops the wasp in the middle of the grassy clearing around a small green-gold canares dome. It’s a much plainer dwelling than my sister’s comfortable home, but so long as it’s safe from marauders I’m sure she’ll be grateful.
I forget all caution and scramble out onto the flared wing as soon as Severin opens the hood. A heavily-armed Kareshi on guard outside the open door steps back to let me inside.
I almost collide with Safi’s husband, on his way out to meet me.
‘Finn! I’m so glad you’re safe!’ I glance round. ‘Where’s Safi?’
‘Gone.’ The look on his face says it all. I steer him to the hover-couch and push his stocky frame into it.
‘Tell me what happened.’ I look up as Severin walks in. ‘Safi’s missing!’
Severin nods silent encouragement to Finn as he draws up a couple of hover-chairs for himself and me.
Finn waves a distraught hand at the inner door to the small canares annex.
‘Kids are in there asleep. They don’t know yet. I’m going to keep them in the dark as long as I can in hope we’ll get Safi back soon.’ He rumples his short dark hair as if it might help him think. ‘It was barely ten minutes ago. She went outside to try to locate the kittens with the mix of pheromones and summoning calls she’s been experimenting with. She was just there, outside the dome where we could see her. And...’
He buries his face in his hands. ‘It’s my fault! I should have watched her the whole time, but she said it would take a while, and then one of the kids started crying and I turned away to deal with the crisis. And when I turned back she’d gone.’
‘You think they snatched her?’ Severin keeps his voice calm but there’s an urgency beneath the words that’s almost tangible.
Finn looks up miserably. ‘Not here they didn’t. Safi called me a couple of minutes after she disappeared, saying she’d found a trace and was following it up. She was so excited, I think she just forgot about the danger.’ He shrugs, a fond smile mixed with his gloomy resignation. ‘You know what she’s like, devoted to those kittens. Then she screamed, and a moment later a rather unpleasant female voice said if we want her back they’ll exchange her for Hannik and someone called Vander.’
‘Dammit! They must have been watching the place. But how did they know?’ Severin tries to reassure Finn. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get Safi back. But you’d better get the kids packed up and ready to move. You’re not safe here.’
Finn’s eyes widen in alarm. He says nothing but makes straight for the annex where his children are sleeping. Severin grabs my hand and pulls me outside to confront the guard. He peers at the middle-aged man’s name badge, taking in his short bulky frame and the white-knuckled hands gripping the dart gun. I can tell this is someone who abandoned fieldwork for a desk some time ago, only to be pulled back into action to repay an old debt of loyalty to Alis. Severin tries not to sound as if he’s laying blame for what happened.
‘Tregen, what did you see?’
The guard points towards the trees. ‘It were all so fast. She were standing right by the door and then there’s this noise over there, far side of the clearing. So I went to take a look.’ He shrugs apologetically. ‘Must have been their distraction ‘cause when I came back she’d gone.’
I feel Severin struggle to control his exasperation before his next question.
‘How many people have access to the list of safe houses?’
Tregen scratches his balding head ‘None of us, till we’re directed to one of ‘em. Which don’t happen very often.’
‘Well, somebody must have access or they wouldn’t be able to direct you, would they?’
‘Oh. See what you mean. Only the Commissioner. Head of police in Kar.’
‘Thanks.’ Severin pulls out his holo-com, keys in to the secure network and steps away from Tregen. ‘Alis, is there a safe house anywhere in Kar the Commissioner doesn’t know about? Because I think we’ve just identified one of the key players in this ‘let’s start a war’ game.’ He listens for a moment, checks the coordinates that appear on the mini-screen at the end of the roll, then turns back to Tregen.
‘Would you be prepared to take Finn to another safe house without reporting back to your boss?’
Tregen looks doubtful. ‘I could be in big trouble for that.’
Severin takes another step back. ‘There’s a leak in your system somewhere, and that’s why they were able to get so close and snatch Safi. So the only way to keep those children safe is to go dark till we’ve got this sorted.’
Tregen glances towards the dome, then nods slowly.
‘I guess if that’s what it takes, it’s worth losing me job to keep those kiddies safe.’ He tips his head towards the other guard positioned at the edge of the clearing. ‘But Ressay over there, he’s gone along with what Alis wants out of friendship for past times, but he won’t refuse a direct order from the Commissioner. Which was to keep everyone here.’
‘Fine. In that case I’ll take responsibility for Ressay’s decision to opt out of what we’re about to do.’ Severin draws his dart gun, swings round and shoots Ressay in the neck. The startled guard collapses on the ground before he has time to work out what happened.
Severin runs over to retrieve his dart and Ressay’s weapons just as Finn walks out of the dome, one sleepy twin in his arms and the other clinging to his shoulders. He stops dead in his tracks, his hand moving instinctively to cover his child’s eyes. He glares at Severin.
‘You just killed him!’
I grab Finn’s arm. ‘He didn’t. Just knocked him out for an hour or so. We need to get Ressay inside the dome and out of sight.’
Finn gives the sort of helpless shrug that is all anyone can manage when they’re carrying two children and have no intention of putting them down. Severin persuades Tregen to drag Ressay inside and turns to Finn.
‘I’ll take the kids in the wasp. Safer. I think the gang will probably have a tracker on the landcar so you and Tregen will have to go through the forest on foot. I’ll scout the first section for you from the air.’
Finn hesitates, but only for a moment before nodding and carrying the children over to the wasp.
‘Look at this, you two! You’re getting a ride in Severin’s fantastic air-shuttle!’
Severin helps him squash the happy twins into the cramped space and scrambles into the pilot’s seat.
‘Hannik, is your attunement sharp enough to make it back to Safi’s house without getting caught by the gang? There’s a chance you might be able to pick up Talaya’s trail.’
I feel my face breaking into a grin. ‘I’m glad you suggested it, ‘cause that’s just what I was planning!’
Severin looks wary. Please, promise me you’ll stay out of their sight till I get back from delivering these two.’
‘Sure.’ I squeeze his hand and run to the edge of the clearing.
I look back once to see the wasp take off and weave impossibly between the trees, protecting Finn and Tregen who are following the coordinates Alis had sent over, running flat out towards a secret safe house o
n the edge of the city.
7
I pause for the tenth time, holding still and silent, reaching my mind out into the pulse of the forest, taking in every sound, every movement, every ripple of life-force. The infinite connections and reconnections spread out around me in a glorious hologram of information, sensations and patterns that tell me what’s out there and how to navigate it.
At least, that’s how it usually happens. Exciting, inviting, vivid sounds and shapes drawing me in to their endless dance of molecules and energies...
I’m reluctant to admit it but for all the effort I made on the journey here, the flight was too rapid for my senses to fully keep up with the changing song of the land as it shifted from cool prairie to tropical forest. The only predators I’m afraid of are human ones, but each time I sense the presence of someone hidden in the tree shadows it’s elusive, flitting in and out of my awareness like a phantom.
It’s frustrating. Like being a kid again, trying to use half-learned skills with barely enough experience to know what you don’t know so to speak. Like the time when...
I stop, staring at the ripe frinberries decorating the bush in front of me, their glistening yellow skins catching a stray ray of sunlight that has made it through the thick forest canopy above. Maybe it’s this first glimpse of them reminding me of the time when...
I hastily harvest two handfuls of the berries and smear them over my face and hands, then remember a bad mistake I made the first time I did this and wipe the yellowish juice over my hair as well, rubbing the sticky dregs over my clothes for good measure. I glance around, make one last effort to detect nearby aggressive persons, then leap for the nearest overhanging branch.
I’ve always been a good climber and make the ascent into the topmost branches without a sound, racing the russet squirrels already playing here until they decide this frinberry-coated newcomer is too peculiar to tolerate. They decamp into the next tree, chittering their disapproval of the invasion into their playground. I hold my breath, hoping the pursuers on the ground are too sense-deadened by their use of guns to pick up on the warning sounds.
They aren’t. Maybe their use of tec weapons is too recent to have had much effect yet, but I can tell they are still on my trail. Two of them are approaching somewhere below and my awareness of them is annoyingly still going in and out of focus. A few more minutes and they’ll reach the tree. Maybe they won’t look up. Maybe they will.
Focus, you idiot!
I concentrate on how it felt the last time I launched into this particular exercise. Six years old and utterly determined to protect my sister, it had been an effort of last resort. Safi was a gangly thirteen then, being teased and tormented unmercifully by two boys at my school about her obsession with cats. Parental advice about ignoring stupid ignorant kids who obviously had problems hadn’t really cut it with Safi, who had confidence issues of her own. The cat-and-kitten thing was part of her coping strategy.
Perhaps it was ironic that it was little sister Hannik who had plenty of confidence, totally unmatched by my physical strength of course. Unfortunately no amount of a six year old’s combat training could compensate for the size and weight of two large bullies and I soon became painfully aware of this. Particularly after I’d come home with a black eye, too embarrassed to reveal its source to my parents.
It had been time to try stronger measures. Even at six years old my attunement skills were already ultra-sharp, albeit still erratic and unreliable and my teachers were a little puzzled when I started asking for instructions on summoning. Children are, after all, supposed to study the Ten Principles of Lieth in the proper order, carefully designed to ensure their safety. Suddenly wanting to skip a few stages and study the Fifth Principle was considered unusual. However, all good teachers know that following students’ enthusiasm always produces the best results and my younger self had received basic training in the Fifth.
I’d lost interest in further training for other species once I perfected the technique for summoning zither-hornets. It’s an unusual sound, a peculiar rustling, rasping but astonishingly penetrating whirr that echoes through the forest, telling any co-workers from the nest within receptor range that there is an excellent supply of lovely juicy grasshoppers just over here.
I had covered myself in repellent frinberry juice, climbed a tree, waited until the two bullies were on their way home, and commenced my summoning.
The hornets duly arrived, became extremely angry at the absence of the promised grasshoppers and decided to make do with a couple of Kareshi schoolboys instead––
Crack!
Something whips past my ear and snicks through the leaves beside me, jolting me out of my memories as I instinctively flatten myself against the narrowing tree trunk.
They’ve seen me! Seems they’ve gone beyond trying to get information from me. Maybe they’ve already taken Vander and don’t need my information any more...
Being shot at twice in the space of a week should make me too fearful to think properly but caution has never been my strong point. At least I seem to have learned some useful techniques from my childhood experience. My senses sharpen and the memory of that first summoning experiment starts coming back with every detail in perfect focus.
Back then I’d been sufficiently considerate to arrange my ambush near enough to a stream for the victims to plunge into the water after the first few stings, otherwise the attack might well have been fatal.
I don’t extend my pursuers the same consideration now. There isn’t really time for that sort of finesse while I can hear them busily hacking through a tangle of brambles on their mission to kill me and threaten my sister. I pull the exact timbre of the summoning call from my memory, hoping I’ll be lucky and there will be a nest somewhere in range.
At last the sound feels right. I focus on getting it as loud as I can without it going outside normal hornet-produced levels, in which case it won’t work at all.
It’s getting harder to concentrate properly. Part of my awareness is being dragged back into uncomfortable memories of what happened after I’d watched the two school bullies repeatedly trying to get out of the water, only to be driven back under by a swarm of frustrated hornets. I’d been laughing so much it was all I could do to hang on to the thin branches without falling out of the tree.
It had been so satisfying to confront the red-spotted bullies the next day and solemnly assure them they would never be safe unless they left my sister alone. I’d not given them any more details than that but it didn’t take my father long to put the strands of evidence together and figure out what had happened. Maybe I inherited my gestalt abilities from him, although he generally plays down his talent as being only average.
My childhood penance had been long and tedious. Six months of family chores, community chores and extra study on the virtues of non-violence. But Safi was never teased again and has been devotedly grateful to me ever since.
An angry shout comes from the foot of the tree. They’ve found me. It’s hard to see beyond the intervening leaves and branches but it looks as if someone is raising a hand and a gun in my direction. I still can’t see whether it’s a bullet gun or a dart gun, but from this height it makes no difference. A dart will make me fall unconscious out of the tree and I’ll be extremely dead a few seconds after I hit the ground.
I squirm round to the far side of the trunk and watch the shadowy figure below move round and take aim.
At last I hear the high-pitched buzzing I’ve been hoping for. The buzzing increases in pitch as the finger-length stripy insects get a whiff of the hated frinberry coating my body and take evasive action. The sound fades a little as they sense movement below and the swarm heads towards the ground.
It takes a few seconds for their diminutive hornet-brains to figure out they’ve been had.
No grasshoppers!
The whine increases in pitch just as something snicks through the leaves again in the spot where my head had been a fraction of a second before. Whether
it’s bullet or dart finally, oh blessed relief, becomes irrelevant. A couple of screams come from below, followed by sounds of frantic crashing through the undergrowth as humans try to outrun hornets. I have no clue where the nearest stream might be.
As soon as everything goes quiet I slither down the tree and run the rest of the distance to Safi’s abandoned domehouse.
From the outside everything seems undisturbed and strangely normal. I figure I’d better check inside before looking for Talaya’s tracks. Cautiously, I approach the dome from the side and wriggle forward to peer in from ground level, poised to duck back out of sight if there is anyone lurking in there.
Nothing. Except that the place has been hurriedly searched, items tossed onto the floor and a pool of sticky candystalk juice spilled in the kitchen. Perhaps they hoped their illicit packages had been hidden in here.
I pick my way between the discarded bits and pieces, hoping they haven’t spilled Safi’s precious pheromone experiments as well. I find the bottles still safely stashed in a corner cupboard, check through the labels and select the one with the most recent date.
Safi had been so excited when she finally perfected her combination of mother-cat pheromone plus a cleverly imitated summoning call. At last she could allow the kittens plenty of freedom to run around the house and garden and recall them in the same way a mother cat would in the wild.
I know it’s a faint hope that I’ll be able to use it to detect them, but it’s worth a try. I stuff the bottle in one of my gun pockets and go back outside, hoping I can remember the call accurately. I regret now that I hadn’t paid more attention when Safi tried to teach me.
I’ve barely crossed the garden when a series of shrill whistles assaults my eardrums and a very agitated Maz leaps into my arms, wrapping her long fluffy body around my neck like a nervously twitching white scarf. I hold still for a few moments, wondering why Safi’s dome-sentinel hadn’t relocated to the safe house with the rest of the family, but the shrill squeaking soon proves too big a distraction.
