Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  It made for scarce traffic. A good thing, given the view out any port was of complex whorls of suicidal snowflakes all heading straight for us, despite physics. Paul would be relying on scanners. He had, I’d noticed with a thrill of fear, disengaged the automatics. I understood why. The nav system was interactive with the mains at Port Authority. Fishertown didn’t have much in the way of flight control, but it did provide a navigation grid. If Paul linked us to it, we could be followed by those with the right equipment—and motivation.

  It seemed we’d joined that category of inhabitant who couldn’t afford safety.

  “Don’t drop me near any of the family,” Joel said, his voice strained but calm. “And not in the ocean. Leave them a body to space, if you have any feelings for them at all.”

  A muscle jumped along Paul’s jaw, nothing more.

  I levered my jaw over my shoulder so I could stare at Largas in horror. “We would never hurt you, Joel.”

  “Don’t use my name.” He squirmed like a trussed bird of prey, unable to believe its wings were tied, frantic for freedom. “Don’t use it! I don’t want it in your monster’s mouth.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  I couldn’t bear Paul trying to protect me from Joel’s honest hate. “I won’t use it again,” I promised. “But we mean no harm to you or anyone.”

  “If you meant no harm, why did you follow us here? Hadn’t you done enough to us? And him—” words seemed to fail the older Human as he glared at Paul’s back.

  I opened my mouth, then saw my Human shake his head very slightly. He was right, of course. There was nothing I could say that Joel Largas would believe, nothing he’d want to hear.

  Especially from the mouth of a monster. The window nearest me was fogged despite the efforts of the internal ventilation system. It was my fault. I was dumping heat to hold this form, and the warmer, moist air near me was condensing on the frozen plas. I rubbed it clear with one hand.

  The aircar dropped. As we passed through an eddy in the snow, I spotted the lights of a familiar landmark.

  Paul was taking us to Joel’s house.

  I hoped my Human knew what he was doing. The home of the Largas’ patriarch was not only filled to bursting with hardened spacers at any given time, those spacers owed their lives to our new and deadliest enemy.

  There was something wrong. An imbalance grated along every nerve fiber I possessed; the way the universe tilted made my head float. Perhaps my swim sacs were infected again. The feeling had been similar. Lesy had kept an ointment in her cupboard that was most effective, if one could get past the unpleasant part of having to squirt it between one’s fifteenth and sixteenth segments . . .

  Lesy was gone. I’d tasted her despair and death. Ersh—was I losing my mind?

  “It’s a hangover.”

  The sound vibrations initiated a wave of fire down my body, colored white with pain. I tried to remember how to cover my ears, then couldn’t remember where they were. Or if I had any. I must, I thought, feeling clever, if I could hear Paul.

  Paul?

  “Paul?”

  His answer dropped into the silk covering my lap: a tiny vial of powder and a knife. I stared at them, my hands retreating to clench at my sides. Skalet-memory recognized the vial. It would deliver its contents—poison, disease, drug—into the face of a victim, to be absorbed through whatever structures were sufficiently open to air. Well suited to Human anatomy, with its porous skin and the moist linings of mouth, eyes, and nose.

  The knife? Skalet-memory knew too many knives.

  I looked up at my Human.

  There’s no other way, that flash of gray eyes meant.

  I’d seen Paul like this before. I judged it a Human trait, that such a gentle being could turn dark and dangerous, could become something far more perilous than a hungry Ycl or rampaging Ganthor. They, at least, were following the passions of their nature. Paul, at such moments, abandoned his, as if the contradiction between what he was and what he might have to do was unendurable.

  The aircar was circling, bouncing as Paul fought gusts that threatened from one side, then the other, as if Minas XII couldn’t decide how best to knock us from the sky. I couldn’t bring myself to touch either vial or knife, not even for him. He shot another glance at me, then said curtly: “Take the controls.”

  I’d barely gripped the bar in my hands, feeling how the aircar battled any correction and reasonably sure we would now crash so all other concerns were unimportant, when Paul swept the vial from my lap and aimed it over my shoulder. He sat back down and took the controls, relieving me of responsibility for our lives. “Cut him free and hide the bindings. Quickly. We can’t stay up here much longer. It will look suspicious.”

  Without knowing if I’d have a source of mass, I couldn’t cycle from this form, so it served Paul right that my spacious hips required most of the front seat—both front seats—in order for me to turn and reach where Joel Largas lay. I sighed with relief. He was breathing. Unconscious and flushed, but breathing.

  Paul might not have my hearing, but he couldn’t very well miss a sigh rumbling millimeters from his ear, especially a sigh through lungs the size of my present ones. “You thought I’d killed him,” he accused. “Damn it, Esen, you know me better than that!”

  “Of course I do,” I told him, more than willing to lie for friendship’s sake. “I’m—It’s not been a good day, Paul.” For us, I thought darkly, imagining a celebration of sorts probably underway among the Humans in black.

  The bindings cut easily. I shoved the pieces and the knife into one of the rear cupboards, then straightened Joel’s arms and legs, relying on form-memory to choose the most comfortable positioning. There. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume Joel was sleeping off one of his famed visits to the Circle Club. His face even had the same mottled flush.

  I struggled into my seat as the aircar entered the shelter between buildings, nodding as Paul said: “Let me do the talking.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Doubtless, Ersh would have found that a pleasant change. What Paul thought, I couldn’t imagine. He was resting, having spent the past hours defending me from the suit I’d so loved, making sure I was no longer harming myself. No longer hiding from myself.

  During those hours, he’d talked until his voice was hoarse, nonsense mainly, anything to keep me awake as my mind cleared. I remembered only fragments: children’s rhymes, imperfect verb forms, a price list for tea, a prayer.

  It hadn’t been a drug. I couldn’t decide if I’d unconsciously reset my suit’s environmental controls to circulate an excess of aldehydes, or missed some improper adjustment when I’d first cycled into the form. I hoped, for pride’s sake, it was the latter, then realized that only made it worse. Paul had been made ill by his Oieta-made suit; under some conditions, that illness might have harmed or killed him.

  If I’d reset the controls myself? I’d remember, wouldn’t I? Could my perfect memory be flawed? Green, the color of shame, stained the ventral surface of my suit and spread up my sides. Several aldehydes were potent intoxicants to this form. Paul had called me “blissed out of my gills.” Another day or two of such detached contentment and I might have stayed mindless. Or died. As it was, I recovered slowly, prone to violent tremors, as if my nervous system was relearning itself. The water inside my suit didn’t taste as it should.

  Paul had assured me, and I think himself, that the suit was now set to its default parameters, optimum for an active Oieta. More reassuring than any gauge was the rising flood of emotion and memory. I was Esen again.

  Whether I wanted to be, or not.

  There’d been a fuss in the Largas’ household when we arrived, of course. Offspring and their allies had boiled from every door like so many insects, Joel had been carried inside, a pair of cousins with medical training summoned from their kitchen duties, and we’d been treated with every kindness.

  After all, hadn’t Cameron & Ki been the subject of an unprovoked assault? Hadn’t we lost
our home and warehouse? How fortunate, became the theme, that our office had been unscathed.

  The office, this new, untrusting Esen thought, where Meony-ro would have been during the attacks. And others.

  Their kindness made it difficult to make the quick exit we’d hoped. Paul and I managed to refuse to go farther into the house than the front entrance, but a group of seven Humans, of varying ages, stayed to offer their interpretation of events. We knew them all. The youngest, John, had come to the greenhouse with his great grandfather earlier in the week. He leaned against me now, one hand gripping the silks on my leg, the other with thumb firmly embedded in his mouth as he watched with larger-than-normal eyes.

  All I could think about was Joel’s reaction if he woke and saw the child with his monster.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Aeryn Largas announced loudly, passing on a message received via a com held to her ear. Common practice—continued additions to the original building had produced a sprawling complex in which I tended to be lost more than found. “They say he should wake up on his own soon.” I watched the round of relieved expressions, including the surreptitious wiping of tears. Two of those who hugged at the news had been contracted wives, here to visit their former spouse while their ships were on Minas XII. Age hadn’t tarnished Joel Largas’ charm to any extent I’d seen.

  “Good,” Paul said, then bent to pry my silk from John’s fingers. “We have to get back. The Port Jellies should have answers for us by now.”

  “Thank you for bringing Joel home first.” This from Aeryn. She’d been a baby on one of the ships threatened by Death. Now, she oversaw engine maintenance for Largas Freight. There was a self-portrait, complete with chubby cheeks and curls, in my office. A gift, for my birthday.

  A gift I couldn’t keep.

  Conveniently—for the first time in recent memory—my third stomach rumbled, causing those near me to edge away and Paul to take my arm. “We’d better get you out of here,” he said, managing to make it sound amused.

  Since only we knew it was good-bye, they merely waved. A supper invitation for later in the day was noticeably lacking, but there wasn’t a Largas on this world who didn’t appreciate the hazards of hosting an upset Lishcyn.

  The storm hadn’t abated so much as it had decided on a direction from which to pummel the valley. Paul selected a course into the wind, then set the controls and turned to me.

  “Well, Old Blob,” he said, brushing his hair back from his forehead and letting his expression settle into a bruised weariness. “What now?”

  There was comfort in being able to quote Ersh. “Our Web must be safe. It must be hidden.”

  One eyebrow lifted. “I’m all for a strategic retreat, Es, as long as it’s quick. If they let Joel sleep off the sedative, we have six hours. If they wake him—” Paul shrugged then winced. Feeling the effects of being too close to an exploding Esen, I decided.

  “Joel isn’t the worst problem we have,” I reminded him, keeping one hand under my jaw as a precaution.

  His mouth tightened into a grim line of agreement. “The trap at Dribble’s—I know. I don’t think that part went as planned. What did was their little stage play in the greenhouse.”

  “Stage play?” I was glad of my hand. “They were going to kill you!”

  Paul leaned forward, eyes intent. “And maybe they believed that. But I think whoever sent them knows you, Esen, well enough to appreciate what a web-being could do against blasters—well enough to know you’d cycle to save my life.”

  “All that just to make me reveal what I am?” I blinked. “Why? And why let us go?”

  My Human nodded slowly. “It makes sense, Es. Joel Largas is the one person who can force us off this planet, make sure we aren’t safe anywhere in the Fringe. By turning Joel against us,” he halted, as if his throat closed over the words. “With one stroke,” he went on, “we’re adrift and friendless in this part of space.” Paul put his hand on my knee. “We haven’t been let go, Esen. This someone is driving us in a specific direction. I’ll bet we find our choices at the shipcity are pretty limited.”

  “More than you know, my friend,” I told him. “We can’t—”

  “Go near any of the Group?” I stared at him and he patted my knee. “I thought of that too, Es. We can’t risk exposing them.” Paul paused and his voice became a growl worthy of my Lanivarian self. “And we can’t know for sure one or more weren’t behind this attack.”

  “Well, Old Blob?”

  I used one pole to push, the other to hold, the result being a graceful swing to face the owner of that voice. “Do you mean, have I recovered?” A quick inward assessment. We were getting ready to disembark on Prumbinat—or rather to sneak off the freighter as she refueled—and I knew I could ease at least one of Paul’s concerns. “Yes. All of Esippet Darnelli Swashbuckly present and accounted for—” I paused. “Have you picked a name?”

  We’d spent our final day translight talking about the future and avoiding the past. Our strategic retreat, as Paul called it, would be temporary, to gather resources and plan how to find whoever had destroyed the comfortable lives of Cameron & Ki. Unstated? We needed time as well, having neither healed nor fully comprehended what had happened. Prumbinat, I recalled fondly, was the ultimate hiding place.

  Paul shrugged our belongings over his shoulder, tied together in a bag made from the blanket he’d used. All we now had, but all we’d need. The few supplies we’d had waiting in the aircar, among the more important being credit chits under various names and species. “How about Paul Antoni Ragem?”

  I checked the aldehyde balance in my suit. Nominal. “It’s a good name,” I said weakly, broadcasting an alarmed beige and white.

  He laughed. I didn’t find it a happy sound. “Don’t look so worried, Esippet. I’ve chosen something suitable for our new life. Paul Gast. Like it?”

  Names anchored history; they came with their own. I watched a bubble float past my oculars and didn’t need to tell Paul I understood his choice. He would know.

  Gast. In the language of his distant ancestors, the original word for that which neither lived, nor had substance in the real world.

  A ghost.

  Otherwhere

  DONE. For whatever good it would do.

  Rudy ejected his chit from the com terminal. He flipped it into the air with a casual whistle, then reinserted it, counting under his breath. Five, four, three . . . He ejected the chit again at . . . one.

  The worm he’d just released would tunnel through the translight data streams, destroying any records of the messages he’d sent.

  As an afterthought, he tucked a tiny globe of acid with a timer inside the casing. No point taking chances.

  The recipients of his warnings should be equally careful, given their chosen calling. Rudy shrugged. Their problem, not his, he reminded himself. As was how seriously any in Paul’s Group would take an anonymous warning about Cristoffen. He’d debated with himself during the past three days about offering the warning at all, but it was hardly a level playing field if Cristoffen had gained a Kraal backer.

  He’d sent the warning to everyone but Paul, who didn’t yet know his cousin possessed detailed information about his little organization. Interesting how secrets grew on each other, like layers of mold, Rudy thought.

  He joined the throng of tourists admiring the view from the balustrade, another Human of less than average height and wider than average build, complete with distance lens and vid camera around his neck. Even his face helped him fade from notice: blunt-featured, almost coarse, the sum forgettable.

  When he chose, Rudy could transform his face with a broad, careless smile into that of an easy mark, the sort who carried unsecured credit and lusted after the seedier type of local entertainment, if only he knew where to find it. The former patroller had used his appearance to advantage many times. It wasn’t his fault if others underestimated the speed with which he could move, or the power in his well-muscled frame. It wasn’t his fault i
f they failed to recognize the scorn in his eyes.

  If they chose to make assumptions, Rudy was always happy to correct them.

  He could have used such a distraction today, as he waited for Esen. He’d left the innocent message they’d agreed upon, the one meaning she must find a way to contact him as soon as possible. How and when depended on Esen’s resourcefulness. She’d find a way to avoid Paul and reach him. She had before.

  All he had to do was wait where she could find him.

  Rudy played tourist until sunset, a spectacle producing exclamations of awe and delight from those unaware that the Urgians paid to have the horizon outside their largest Port City appropriately tinted, being a businesslike species who refused to allow the unreliability of nature to disrupt their trade. Then he’d caught the next transport to the Casselman Hotel Complex, confident a message would be waiting.

  There wasn’t.

  “Would you please look again?” Rudy kept it casual, as though this wasn’t his fourth unsuccessful trip down to the desk tonight.

  He was eyes to eye with the night clerk, an Urgian sitting on the counter, its present morph state discreetly hidden beneath a series of veils, presumably lest she/he/it distract the other staff. The being’s eyelid lowered slightly, lending it a remarkably bored expression. It sang and whistled, the sounds reemanating from a filigreed box on its lap in soprano comspeak. “There is nothing for me to look for, Hom Leslie. As I’ve explained, on several occasions, any and all communications would be directed to your room immediately. There is no need to check here.”

  Rudy put his foot on the rail and got comfortable. “And as I’ve explained, the message I’m expecting may come by unconventional means. My business associate tends to be creative.”

  The eyelid rose, exposing the delicate tracery of pink blood vessels surrounding a limpid pool of reflective, emerald green. By Urgian standards, an eye of stunning beauty. Rudy wondered how his compared. “An artist?” she/he/it asked, the whistle tremulous, as though the words held more meaning than the translator could express.