Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “You could have told me,” I grumbled.

  Ersh made a wind-over-sand sound. A sigh. “I was waiting for some sign you were mature enough not to take this personally. You think too much. Was I right?”

  There must have been thousands of the small crystals dotting the ceiling. There was room for more. “You were right, Ersh,” I admitted. “But . . . this?” I waved a dirty paw upward.

  She hesitated. “Let’s leave it that it seemed a waste to turn them into dust. Speaking of dust, go and clean yourself. That form takes time to heal.”

  I nodded and took a step away, when suddenly, I felt her cycle behind me and froze.

  Ersh knew whatever Skalet knew.

  She didn’t know—yet—what I knew.

  Suddenly, I wanted it to stay that way. I didn’t want Ersh to taste that memory of hearing a murder and not lifting a paw to stop it. I didn’t want Skalet, through Ersh, to ever learn I’d been there. I wanted it never to have happened. Which was impossible. So I wanted it private.

  I didn’t know if I could, but as I loosened my hold on my Lanivarian-self, cycling into the relief of web-form, I shunted what must stay mine deep within, trying to guard it as I always tried to hold what was Esen alone safe during assimilation.

  I formed a pseudopod of what I was willing to share, and offered it to Ersh’s teeth.

  I’d succeeded in the unimaginable, or Ersh deliberately refused to act on the event. Either satisfied me, considering I couldn’t very well ask her. Her sharing was just as incomplete. There was nothing in her taste of Skalet’s attempted theft or her plans for the Kraal. Or Uriel’s existence. I supposed, from Ersh’s point of view, one Human life didn’t matter on a scale of millennia. I wondered if I’d ever grow that old.

  Our lives returned to normal under Picco’s orange glare, normal, that is, until the next Eclipse. Ersh went out in Tumbler form, with me by her side. There weren’t many failed offspring this time, but those she found, we brought home to add to the ceiling. More prisms to light the greenhouse. I found a pleasing symmetry in the knowledge, a restoration of balance badly shaken.

  Later that night, Ersh surprised me again. “I’ve had enough of you underfoot,” she announced without warning. “Go visit Lesy.”

  Go? I blinked, waiting for the other side of this too-promising coin to show itself.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? The shuttle’s on its way. Don’t bother to pack—no doubt Lesy went on a shopping spree the moment she knew you were coming. You’ll be in a shipping crate, of course, since you can’t hold anything but this birth-shape of yours long enough to get outsystem, let alone mingle with a crowd. And don’t come out on your own. Lesy is expecting you.”

  Don’ts, Dos, and Details went flying past, none of them important. “But I can come back ...” I ventured, holding in a whine.

  A low reverberation. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a growl. “Do you think you’ve learned everything you need to know, Youngest?”

  My jaw dropped down with relief. “Of course not,” I said happily.

  Ersh came closer, lifting my jaw almost gently into place with her rock-hard fingers. “You aren’t ready, Esen-alit-Quar,” she told me in her blunt, no-nonsense voice, the one she used before inspecting anything I’d done. “But you have become—interesting. It’s time you broadened your horizons.”

  I trembled in her hold. Did she know? Could she? Had I been wrong to believe I could, like Ersh, hide my memories? I drew a breath—to ask or blurt out a confession, I wasn’t sure which—when she released me and turned away, saying only: “Don’t worry about your plants, Youngest. Skalet’s coming to tend the greenhouse. I think I’ll have her dig out an extension while she’s here—put some of that military training to use.”

  This time, I let my tail wag all it wanted.

  I wasn’t that old yet.

  2: Cliffside Afternoon

  OVER the years, I’d learned to edit my stories. Paul’s eyes tended to glaze if I included such things as the composition of pavement where I’d walked, or the original source of various ornamental bulbs in a garden I’d passed. His passion was for language and culture—those details I could describe in any amount of depth and keep him fascinated.

  When, as today, we exchanged stories about our separate pasts, I considered it a sharing and assimilation of a sort, so truth was important. Important to me, anyway, which was apparently why Paul found it so entertaining to exaggerate his exploits until I had to refuse to believe him. It was quite frustrating. But, over the years, I’d become used to it. This was the sharing I had, within our Web of two. It was, in its own way, gratifying.

  However, some things, I’d decided long ago, should stay within me. It was my right and responsibility as Senior Assimilator—not to mention that it prevented embarrassment, something I managed sufficiently for any being without digging more from my past. So I’d edited some of the truths from this story, as well.

  “Skalet,” Paul murmured. “An interesting individual.” He was a master of understatement. “Did she ever get her treasure from Ersh’s mountain?”

  I considered the question. “She didn’t establish a House of her own among the Kraal.” That I knew, I corrected to myself. Ersh hadn’t shared such information with me, nor had I tasted it the one time Skalet and I had exchanged web-mass directly, without Ersh presorting her memories to those suitable for the Youngest of her Web.

  I’d learned to be grateful for what I’d once considered Ersh’s hoarding of secrets. Most of the things in my memory I preferred not to keep near the surface of my thoughts were Skalet’s “gifts.” Warfare: within a family or between worlds. Assassination and sabotage. Intrigue and lies. The cold assessment of everything in terms of expendability, risk, and gain. Curiosity without conscience. Passion without morals.

  I might not care for these things, but they tried to surface even as I resisted. I wrapped my arms tightly around a body that Skalet-memory deemed too fragile and conspicuous. It was both, but it was a body I used only when I was with Paul, and this shaping of Esen was as much me as any other form I chose.

  Well, to be honest, one other being knew this me. “Have you heard from Rudy lately?” I asked.

  Paul accepted my blatant change of subject with good grace, doubtless aware Skalet’s memories made me uneasy. He’d know more if I hadn’t edited her murder of the Kraal, Uriel, from my storytelling.

  There were, I thought comfortingly, useful disadvantages to listening to a story rather than eating it.

  Otherwhere

  A TUMBLER rolled its way along a mountaintop. This was perfectly normal behavior for a lifeform made from an aggregation of compatible crystals, if not a perfectly normal mountain.

  This mountain was Forbidden.

  Not that Tumblers paid attention to any prohibitions to their movement over Picco’s Moon, especially during the bliss of procreation. They had no terms for property or trespass anyway. Up and down, yes. They had a plethora of words to describe slope, terrain, composition, the likelihood of finding scintillating conversation, and, most importantly, the predicted angle of the sun’s rays during Eclipse at any one place.

  Especially this mountain, of all places on Picco’s Moon. In the past, many had sought it during bliss, believing offspring shed here were more likely to be perfect. Then, this mountain had been home to the strangest Tumbler of all, the Immutable One, a being older than memory, unchanged by time, and seemingly unaffected by mere biology, save for a compulsive curiosity about everything from Picco’s orbit to the habits of those burdened by flesh. Over the millennia, it had become a pilgrimage of sorts to seek out the Immutable One, a memorable event to converse with a legend, especially one with such refined taste in rare mineral salts.

  Especially one whose existence hinted at permanence.

  A false promise. On a day that seemed like any other, Tumblers came to this mountain and found it empty. They mourned the passing of the one they’d thought indestructible, shedding diamond tear
s.

  They declared this mountain Forbidden, in memory.

  However, in every healthy species there exists variation. The Tumbler rolling over this mountain was, if one borrowed characteristics better applied to the flesh-burdened, more daring than most of its kind. Or more careless. The distinction depended on consequence.

  This Tumbler was repeating a journey, in the way its kind had retraced their rolling paths since the dawn of time. One experienced bliss when and where it arrived.

  It was, of course, necessary to retrieve the results.

  The Tumbler slowed and stopped tumbling, having crossed the flat, worn peak of the mountain before finding what it sought. A litter of crystal was caught along the very edge. Some had surely dropped over the side. The Tumbler chimed distress at the accident, then forgot the lost ones, too intent on its task.

  Over and over again, the being reached down, tenderly, and picked up one of the crystals lying before it. Each was held to the pure light of the sun; each accessed. Those worthy of further growth were accreted to the Tumbler’s own body. Those unworthy were consigned to sparkling dust by the swift compression of a hand adapted to that purpose; a tone of grief struck each time, so they would know they were loved, if briefly.

  The Tumbler was preoccupied with its labor, chased by the constraints of astronomy. Worlds turned, orbited, danced. The Tumbler needed the light of the sun to judge its offspring; needed the light reflected from Picco herself to safely navigate the trip down the mountain.

  The Tumbler had no attention to spare for concealed machines, busy at mysterious tasks. It had no time to waste on other trespassers.

  As its body disintegrated into sparkling dust to join that of its flawed children, all it knew was that its killer wore flesh.

  3: Office Morning; Kitchen Afternoon

  AMONG the thousands of living intelligent species, and the millions no longer with us, and probably, I told myself with disgust, the untold billions yet to come, Humans had to be the most obstinate.

  And Paul Cameron was the worst of his kind. His fascination with the Ycl—obligate predators without any redeeming qualities, except their fortunate lack of the technology required to sample the multispecies’ smorgasbord so temptingly beyond their world’s orbit—boded well to give me ulcers in all five stomachs.

  Not that such details mattered when my Human’s mind was, as he put it, made up and his gray eyes had that dangerously determined glint. “We need to know more about them.”

  We were back at our offices, myself in Lishcyn form, which meant I could glare down at the Human over my ample—and very handsome—scaled snout. “You know all you need to know, “ I reminded him. “The Ycl do not leave their planet. No one visits theirs. It seems an equitable arrangement, considering you or any other member of the Commonwealth would constitute a most welcome addition to the menu.” At his scowl, I temporized: “Okay, so they wouldn’t eat Tumblers—but Tumblers don’t possess your fatal curiosity.”

  “Without your web-kin, Fangface,” Paul countered, his dark eyebrows meeting in a frown, “you must hunt for your own information. The Ycl is next on the list for an update.”

  “On your list.” I struggled to keep my voice down, feeling my large ears flicking back and forth in an instinctive search for potential eavesdroppers although Paul was always careful where he spoke so plainly. “I know all I need to know about the form,” I hissed. “I don’t plan to socialize with other Ycl any time soon. Or at all, if I can help it.” There’d been that episode with Ycl mating pheromones, for one thing. A most—embarrassing—episode. Perfectly remembered, of course.

  Another story edited for my Human web-kin.

  Of course this didn’t convince him, but Paul was finally forced to stop badgering me as our moving argument brought us to the area of the building shared by our employees, none of whom were aware that their employers had other identities or ambitions to risk predation for the sake of a bit of chemical slang.

  No, to them, Paul was Paul Cameron, a rather fussy but accomplished freight manager—not Paul Antoni Ragem, formerly Alien Language Specialist on a Commonwealth First Contact Team. Just as well, given that Ragem was officially listed as missing in action and presumed dead over fifty years ago.

  Me? I was known to employees and customers of Cameron & Ki Exports as Esolesy Ki, Lishcyn, art appraiser and linguist; someone they treated with significantly less respect than they did Paul. Not that I minded. For one thing, it meant I was included in office gossip, much of it quite useful in forwarding my education into the social interaction of other species. Paul would not have been impressed—which likely explained why I was included and he was not.

  They didn’t know me as a web-being, last of her kind—at least in Commonwealth space—sought by some as a monster and by others as the possessor of secrets. Very few at all knew such beings existed—that I existed.

  Yet even that few felt like far too many, particularly today, when I floundered trying to communicate with the one alien I knew better than any other.

  It had been our decision: to recruit a secret network of beings to feed us information. It had been Paul’s, without my consent or knowledge, to recruit others, to make them aware of me, to be able to recognize me in several forms. My favorite forms, in fact. I might be polite about it—but Paul knew as well as I that I hadn’t yet accepted this breach of trust from my first friend, no matter how impeccable his intentions.

  My first friend. My best friend. But no longer my only one. I’d made another: Rudy Lefebvre—a fine and worthy being who was also Paul’s cousin. Our paths had collided when Rudy chased rumors of Paul Ragem and found us both. We were neither the traitor nor monster he’d been led to believe, fortunately for all concerned. I had nothing but sincere respect for Rudy’s ability to cause trouble, should he be so inclined.

  He would have been a far more serious threat to our hidden lives than his superior, Lionel Kearn. Another who knew I existed. His feelings toward me were, at best, ambivalent—especially since our last encounter. Paul—well, I’d edited that story for his ears, too, on the logical assumption that if I didn’t understand why I’d risked everything to contact Kearn, my web-kin wouldn’t either. There might have been raised voices. There’d definitely be that look—the one which bore an uncanny resemblance to Ersh’s expression whenever I’d apparently exceeded every imaginable means of causing her grief.

  I shook off thoughts of those offworld, my concern here and now. A now in which Paul had evolved this ridiculous notion of somehow traveling to the Ycl system to observe firsthand the most deadly predators known to Ersh, a system definitely off-limits to any approach.

  My Human had never truly appreciated the value of a dull life when protecting a secret.

  Or, a sudden and highly alarming notion upset the contents of my delicate fifth stomach, Paul was still looking for ways to risk his own.

  As usual, when Paul and I were in the midst of a disagreement, something put all arguments in perspective. This time, it was a message waiting at my desk.

  I started reading it so I had an excuse to ignore whatever Paul began to say, rather vehemently, as he closed the door to gain privacy. As I reread it for the third time, for no reason whatsoever since the words were hardly likely to change in shape or meaning, I was aware on some level that he’d stopped arguing about the Ycl and now waited silently, in front of my desk.

  Softly, for my sensitive ears only. “What’s wrong?”

  I ran my tongue tips over the inlaid gems of my right tusk, but the habit was no comfort. “There’s been an incident,” I said, doing my best not to crush the slip of plas in my four-fingered hand.

  Behind me was a wall, decorated with artwork from our employees’ offspring centered around an unlikely still-image of a Ganthor Matriarch in full battle gear accepting an artistic merit award from a stack of Noberan Iftsen. Like Paul and I—and the award, to be truthful—this wall was other than it seemed. Behind it was another room, much larger, filled with ma
chines and communications systems tirelessly collecting and sorting a vast array of information.

  Information like this.

  “An incident? Where? What kind?”

  I shook my huge head, knowing what he was likely thinking. “Nothing about another web-being. Or Kearn. But it’s connected to me. There’s a missing person—a Tumbler.”

  “Picco’s Moon,” he breathed, and sank into his chair, knowing as well as I that species was constrained by biology and temperament to one small hunk of orbiting stone.

  Not just any hunk of orbiting stone. “Picco’s Moon,” I repeated, hearing the flatness of my own voice. “The Tumbler was last seen climbing Ersh’s mountain. Given the fragility of the species, and the slopes involved, the authorities are treating this as an unfortunate accident. They probably won’t search for a body. Tumblers,” I paused, trying to be delicate, “tend to fracture.”

  “Why there? I thought Tumblers respected your property.”

  I sighed. “This was apparently a being after your own heart, Paul. A risk-taker. But there’s more—” I handed him the slip. “The flyover the authorities conducted found something else.”

  He read quickly, then looked up with alarm. “Who the hell’s mining your mountain?”

  The operation wasn’t legal, of course. Paul sent tracers through our system, tracers that multiplied outward, shunting through dozens of false origins before they converged like strands of a net over any com traffic in or out of Picco’s Moon over the past year. There were reports of ships evading custom checks, an increase, it was thought, in the smuggling of Tumbler gems.

  I hoped it would prove to be something so innocent.

  I owned Ersh’s mountain, an ownership part of me knew was foolishly dangerous, since it was a potential clue to any who sought a history to Esen-alit-Quar—not to mention the dozen forms of me registered as sharing that ownership. It had to be some ephemeral weakness; I had no other frame of reference for the compulsion I felt about the place.