Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  There was no sign of black-garbed Humans, though a few Ganthor milled around in the wreckage, exchanging rather incredible boasts from what I could hear of their cheerful clinking as they hunted for unexploded, and hence still useful, globes. “Can you help me arrange transport?” I asked the Human, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by this evidence of normalcy returning. “I want to go home.”

  An ephemeral saying, I told myself, that suited the moment perfectly. I wanted my rooms, my bright, safe lighting, my own walls around me.

  I should have remembered who and what I was.

  Otherwhere

  DRIP. Drip. Drip. The valley wall gleamed with wetness; the ramplike road braiding its slope was etched with channels of steaming liquid. Even the air lipping at the road’s sheer edge was heavy with mist. Water was the bringer of life, carrier of all things mineral. Water was the agent of death, returning living matter to the rock from whence it came.

  The Tumbler scraped its trowellike fingers along the wall, collecting what drops it could. There was no time to linger within the seeping of the Edianti’s famed springs, to recrystallize the gifts of the earth along every facet of its body. Despite its ordeal, this rash, hurried feeding had to be enough.

  This road was old and unfamiliar; its crumbling steepness a hazard best avoided. The Tumbler had been forced to it by those terrifying sounds in the dark, an unnaturally regular repetition of something falling to the ground, as if it were being pursued by an avalanche able to move along the surface.

  Drip. Drip. Splash.

  They were behind it still, as they had been night and day, through the revealing truth of Eclipse, to true day again. The Tumbler had led its pursuers away from the innocent, done its utmost to lose them in the tears and wounds of the Moon herself. Nothing had stopped the sounds from behind.

  It wasn’t self-preservation. There was danger to more than itself here. Flesh-burdened who would chase one Tumbler across Picco’s Moon? Who dared trespass here? The Elders must know.

  The Tumbler chimed a troubled minor as it rolled down the road. The lawlessness of the flesh-burdened ignored the treaties that welcomed them only to the shipcity and the heights. Elders of the Assansi had granted permission for a group of their scientists to enter a living valley, but that had been long before this Tumbler had been accumulated.

  The flesh-burdened had never been invited to the Edianti. They never would be.

  Drip. Splash, splash, splash!

  The mist thickened with every roll and slide downward, growing sweet with acid and filling with the tastes of home.

  Home. And they followed still.

  The Tumbler slowed to a stop and straightened. If words such as desperation and courage applied to a being made of stone, it knew both as it turned to face upslope. Condensation trickled along its every edge, as if water already knew what must happen and was greedy for the result.

  The Tumbler put its back to the wall, leaned forward, and gracefully rolled off the road’s edge.

  Let them follow now, it thought as it plunged through the mist.

  9: Cliffside Afternoon; Greenhouse Night

  HOME, for a web-being, was wherever her Web gathered. For me, it was Minas XII, a world on the Fringe. Well, some part of it, anyway. The part with Paul in it. But I’d learned other habits over the past decades. Since my Human persisted in calling the stone-walled structure where we lived “home,” I’d begun thinking of it that way myself.

  And now? It was gone. I pressed my snout against the aircar’s windshield, the plas creaking a protest. The rumblings of all my stomachs was louder, and just as unimportant.

  Had Paul been there?

  I stared into the deeply shadowed crater that was supposed to be home, Skalet-memory automatically hunting and deciphering clues, Esen-memory helplessly recording and remembering. The amount of explosive used: excessive, even against a semi-fortress built to be snug and cozy through winter’s hellish storms. Likely method of delivery: by remote, a piece of aircar undercarriage was embedded into what had been the landing pad out front, where Paul had first arrived, ending my loneliness. The reason?

  No clues to that lay seared into the rock.

  “Fem Ki.”

  Words that made no sense. Esolesy Ki did not exist. I kept form by instinct, not will.

  Had Paul been there?

  “Fem Ki.”

  There could be a host of reasons he wasn’t answering to the com, starting with being too busy.

  “Please. Fem Ki, we should get back to Fishertown. The wind’s picking up.” The note of anxiety in the driver’s voice reached me if not the meaning of his words.

  I could go down there, cycle into web-form, taste the debris—and find out.

  Had Paul been there?

  The view disappeared behind what was left of my lunch, breakfast, and last night’s indulgence of fudge. I tapped the driver’s shoulder in mute apology. He took it as a signal to send the aircar careening down the cliff face, back to the Port City and its lights; by his speed, I presumed he hoped to arrive before further interior decorating.

  I didn’t bother telling him that all of my stomachs were quite empty. Nor did I argue with his decision. To go into the burning hole that had been our home, hunting for Paul, was to admit the unthinkable.

  Something I couldn’t do.

  We couldn’t land at the office itself. The driver might be a licensed for-hire and so presumably somewhat law-abiding, but this was Minas XII. He didn’t need me to tell him to slow and turn away when we saw what waited for us. The landing pad on the roof of Cameron & Ki Exports was crammed with aircars—highly official-looking aircars, with all the potential for delays and questions those implied. I had a sudden happy image of Paul, looking his usual imperturbable and vastly respectable self, answering those questions with the truth, or suitable facsimile, removing suspicion and concern as deftly as he would offer a sample of the latest Inhaven wine. Not as a bribe, but as a signal of how he valued the time of his visitors. My Human could work magic with bureaucrats.

  He might be demanding answers himself—answers about the wanton destruction of the wine cellar and home of decent, tax-paying beings such as ourselves.

  In either case, Paul did not need a starving Lishcyn coated in multicolored bile to waltz in the door. I’d done that before and Humans really didn’t react well. Weak-stomached creatures in their own way.

  “Over there, please,” I shouted to the driver, pointing over his shoulder at the long building next to the office. I had to shout. He’d lowered the roof and opened all the side-ports for some reason, despite the hail starting to pepper us both. I couldn’t hear what he said in return, having replaced my hands over my suffering ears, but the aircar obediently swerved left toward the warehouse.

  I was trembling by the time we landed, and hurried to key in payment plus tip. Despite my somewhat soggy and distinctly odorous state, the driver helped me climb out. I took a good look at his face for the first time, seeing the lineage he probably didn’t know. Human. Garson’s World. Refugee. A typical Minas XII import on the surface, but one with eye-folds and cheekbones linking this individual incarnation of humanity to one group of ancestors, to one part of that world where his species had evolved. Warmed by Ersh-memories of fireworks and five-fingered dragons, I grasped tightly at that sense of past retained, as much a comfort to me as the anchor of his strong arm.

  He wouldn’t leave until I stood in the lift and waved good-bye. Extraordinary courtesy, I decided, sagging against the wall the moment the door closed. My lip struggled to lift over a tusk in a smile as I imagined his expression when he saw his tip. It seemed only fair to replace the aircar I’d so abundantly christened. One bright spot in a day that I sincerely hoped couldn’t get worse.

  Of course, I reminded myself, that kind of hope usually gained me nothing but a chuckle from the Cosmic Gods. Once I knew Paul was safe, they could laugh all they wanted.

  The lift could take me to the warehouse floor, but I’d pressed a
sequence of buttons known only to myself, Paul, and a handful of our closest associates. This stopped the lift much sooner than would seem reasonable from the outside. The door opened, and I drew the reason in through my every pore, feeling the scales of my hide finally shrinking to normal.

  Minas XII boasted some trees, waist-high to a Human but only knee-high to a Screed, and a few genera of grasses and moss. Its plant life had struggled onto land, only to be beaten into sullen toughness by the extremes of weather the Humans so enjoyed complaining about. But here?

  I stepped into a jungle, my shoulders stroked by fronds of lush purple-green, my eyes soaking in the bright colors on every side, crisscrossed by sunbeams drawn inward by concealed collectors. My wide, webbed feet left no lasting impressions on the moist turf that made up much of the floor at this end of my greenhouse. My sanctuary.

  My safe and secret place, where I could recover my poise while waiting for Paul. My stomachs growled in sequence, from first to fifth, reminding me of the other very good reason to be here. It might seem I’d chosen the plants by their appearance, but most, if not all, had other uses. Aha. I plucked a nicely ripe cluster of liliming nuts, tossing them to the back of my mouth and unhinging my jaw so my rearmost teeth could crack their shells. A quick swallow moved them into my first stomach, already grinding in anticipation. Another cluster beckoned and I made equally swift work of it.

  “Esolesy Ki!” That voice, with its rich depth and warmth, was as nourishing to my spirit as the nuts now in my second stomach.

  I swallowed more quickly, and rehinged my jaw. “Joel. Have you heard from Paul?”

  “He told me to watch for you.” The Human abandoned the trimmer he’d been guiding through the shrubbery to hurry up to me, hands outstretched. He stopped short of touching me, which was probably wise. “What have you done now?” This with the confident suspicion of someone who knew me well indeed.

  Joel Largas. Second only to Paul as a dear friend. Grandfather to Paul’s twins. A thoroughly admirable being who had built a life on one world, seen it destroyed, then stubbornly gone on to build what boded to be a lasting dynasty on a new one. As he stood there fussing over my disheveled and smelly self, scolding me on general principle, I shone my tusks at him happily, sure everything would now be right with the world.

  I should have been listening for laughter.

  “Paul’s on his way.” Joel delivered this welcome news with a straight face, then chuckled, his eyes twinkling. “I told him to hurry if he wanted to catch you in there. You’re a sight, Es, you really are. I should take a vid for the twins.”

  Between full stomachs and the reassuring news that Paul and Meony-ro had arrived safely at the office, knew everything, and were dealing with it, I merely lifted a tusk and rolled on my stomach within the mud wallow, another delightful aspect of this sanctuary. It wasn’t dirty mud. This was a warm concoction of pink-hued sand and fragrant oils, with a hint of naughty carbonation. Warmer than usual—I’d needed to release some of my built-up tension as heat, since cycling was out of the question. Joel, grimly aware of what had happened at the bar—and to our home—hadn’t stayed with me out of a wish for companionship. Paul had asked him to watch for me, a job Joel took as meaning watch over me as well.

  And if there was anyone who must never see me as anything but Lishcyn, it was this Human. Joel Largas had witnessed the slaughter of friends and family in the jaws of a Web-being, unable to do anything but watch as ships were breached, lives stolen. He’d come away as scarred by that attack as if Death’s teeth had ripped his own flesh.

  Worse, as if that were conceivable, my mindless kin had already incited the obliteration of Garson’s World by the Tly, the act which had turned the Largas clan into homeless refugees.

  A terrible debt, I and my kind owed this forthright and capable being. My friendship couldn’t begin to repay it, not that Joel would ever know.

  I shook off the past, then flattened my ears, closed my eyelids, and shoved my entire head beneath the surface, feeling no guilt whatsoever at the soothing luxury of sand rubbing away the last evidence of my dreadful day. I’d share, but Humans developed unpleasant rashes. The time I’d pushed Paul in—well, suffice it to say even Ersh hadn’t made me feel quite that much remorse.

  Good to know he was finally coming. Paul had been stuck at the office past the supper hour, fending off apologetic officials and newsmag writers. Not much happened outside the Dump on Minas XII, missing tourists being too common for a headline. There had been a pair of opportunistic contractors—Fringe worlds were well-endowed with those looking for profit in tragedy. Not to forget the lawyer—Paul had refused to press a suit against the Ganthor for willful endangerment.

  Joel had relayed the last with a disgusted look, the lawyer being one of his many younger relations, a being obviously possessed of more enthusiasm than sense. I imagined she’d get an earful from the family patriarch over supper. No one sued Ganthor. As well sue the windstorm now rattling the warehouse roof plates.

  Our home wouldn’t have rattled.

  I resurfaced and began skimming the oily sand from my scales with the rubbery paddle Joel passed me, finding it impossible to grasp what had happened no matter how perfect the image in memory. It was a sign, I told myself with significant self-pity, that I’d grown too ephemeral in my way of thinking. But it was hard for my Lishcyn-self to stop grieving over those lovely silk caftans, with matching beaded bags, all reduced to sooty bits in the wind.

  My true self, Esen-alit-Quar, had no need for possessions. I’d collected the odd trinket over the years. But I didn’t need them, I thought, skimming my left arm, something that was probably fortunate under the circumstances. Paul? Since our new life together, he’d avoided acquiring what might have to be abandoned with a zeal worthy of Ersh herself.

  I didn’t know how he felt about needing a new wardrobe, but my own mood began to improve dramatically at the thought of shopping.

  “Excuse me,” I warned Joel, turning my head politely to one side before violently blowing the last trace of sand from my nostrils. Stepping over the tiled side of the wallow, I reached for a strap of polishing leather and began rubbing my scales. The front was easy, but my thick arms and reinforced joints made doing a thorough job on my back a definite struggle.

  “Here, let me.” Joel took the leather and began burnishing my shoulders, stopping now and then to shake accumulated sand from the strap. I poked my toe into the growing pile of pink and eyed the nearest duras plant. Before I could succumb to temptation, Joel snapped the leather against my backside. “Don’t go sticking leaves in yourself—you’re finally clean,” he chided, as he would to any of his grandchildren or their offspring.

  My backside was quite invulnerable to leather, but my sensitive ears flattened at the snapping sound. “I wasn’t going—” The completely insincere protest faded as I spotted the figure pushing through a grove of fine-needled trees toward us. Paul! I showed both tusks.

  More rattling. I’d thought it had been the wind, but as I brought up my ears to better hear Paul’s approach, I swiveled them uneasily, puzzling at an odd echo to his steps. There, to the left, where vines trailed from the ceiling in a curtain of flower-encrusted green. No, there, to the right, behind the tiled depression of the wallow, where ranks of fystia bushes impersonated amber flame.

  Humans might have relatively impoverished hearing, but Joel Largas was no fool. One hard look at me, and he had a disrupter in his gnarled fist. Where he’d hidden it until now I couldn’t begin to guess.

  Paul began to run toward us, silently, desperately, thrusting plants out of his way. As if that had been a signal, every leaf started to shake. The surface of the mud wallow developed ripples even as I felt the heavy vibration through my feet.

  These were impressions I sorted out later, overwhelmed by sound. Breathing: heavy, fast, irregular, on all sides. The breaking of stems, the sick wet sound of ruined flowers as bodies came crashing toward us through the growth. How they’d been so s
ilent before I couldn’t guess. Now, I could hear what had to be dozens approaching.

  “Es!” Paul reached my side, his eyes wild, a weapon free in his own hand. Perhaps he said something more to me, made some foolish request for me to leave. I ignored him.

  Besides, it was too late to run.

  We were surrounded by figures in black armor, identical to that worn by those who had tried to enter Dribble’s. And probably to that worn by those who had destroyed our home, so I would come here, where Paul would follow.

  Skalet-memory was right. There was no such thing as coincidence .

  Otherwhere

  “YES, sir. It’s all in my report.”

  Cristoffen sat the way he wrote. His feet, not that Kearn could see them from his side of the desk, were always aligned; his knees would be together; and his back? Ramrod straight, as though bending his spine might be grounds for dismissal.

  By the book. Kearn tapped his fingers soundlessly and considered the sad truth that, once upon a time, he’d longed for crew members as precise and committed to regulations as this one. He’d judged Ragem and Lefebvre insubordinate louts at best, dangerous mutineers at worst.

  But regardless of whether he’d agreed with their motivations or not, both considered the consequences of their actions before they acted. He could have ordered them to do anything, without fear they’d actually do it.

  “Sir?”

  For a horrible moment, Kearn thought he’d spoken out loud, then realized Cristoffen was, as usual, impatient. This time he had cause. Kearn had delayed this meeting as long as he could, unable to decide what to do. Finally, he’d run out of excuses.

  Kearn coughed before saying, in his most stern voice: “I’m concerned about what isn’t in your report, Ensign.”

  “Sir?” Cristoffen’s dark eyes widened. “Everything’s—”

  “I am not a fool,” Kearn said, ruffling the document with what he hoped seemed offended dignity and not dread. “You were shot at with a blaster, point-blank, no farther away from your assailant than you are from me now. Putting aside, for the moment, why you were there in the first place to risk such an attack—without consulting me, your superior officer, before taking such rash action—I want to know how you survived. Do you expect me to believe you not only had the foresight to purchase and wear a personal shield, but that his weapon misfired? I am not a fool,” Kearn repeated, a firm believer in emphasizing the key parts of any speech.