Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Rudy didn’t hesitate. “An artist,” he agreed, pushing the limits of the definition to include being able to trace around one’s fingers with charcoal on a wall. Esen might be a knowledgeable appraiser and lover of art in all its varied forms. She’d be the first to admit she owned no creativity whatsoever. “You know how they are,” he continued, “always trying to find new means of self-expression. I’m never sure what she’s going to send me next.” That much was the truth, he grinned to himself.

  “You are so fortunate to benefit directly from a creative mind. How wonderful! I wish you’d told me this sooner.” The tip of a white tentacle, coated in tiny iridescent scales, slipped from under the veils to depress a gilded button on the counter. “I have summoned my assistant. An artist? This is most gratifying, Hom Leslie.” The Urgian clerk was vibrating.

  Rudy wondered if this was at the prospect of seeing Esen’s latest creation and felt a twinge of guilt.

  A servo rattled through the door behind the counter, its torso bedecked with laundry. Only one ocular showed. If it was an attempt to disguise what was patently a Human-built mechanism, it must fool only the Urgians. Rudy was careful not to smile as the night clerk sang and whistled a series of commands, while two of her tentacles danced over a control panel she may have thought out of his line of sight. The servo responded with a series of tenor hoots and a squawk.

  “I’m sorry, Hom Leslie. Roams tells me everything left with us for guests today has been sent to their rooms. But I will keep my eye watching for you—that is the Human expression, isn’t it?”

  “Close enough. Thank you.”

  The Casselman catered to tourists and business travelers on a budget, which explained the air of reassuring sameness that promised exactly what you paid whether in this hotel or in its mates over half of the quadrant. At the same time, almost apologetically, the Casselman possessed a surprising amount of local charm, being distant enough from the shipcity to attract Urgian guests. The main lobby thus had low, white cushions on the floor, set between couches more suited to swallowing Human-sized posteriors. The walls of each lift were ribbed so Urgians could avoid the peril of sharing limited floor space with heavier, footed species. They needed only two arms to climb vertical surfaces, leaving the others free to hold luggage or wave in conversation.

  Urgians. The species made Rudy feel like a tree taking root, an old, gnarled tree at that. As a younger fool, he’d imagined himself something of a poet, writing mountains of verse to various young ladies, publishing a few whenever verse outlasted passion. Then Paul, with the best of intentions, had brought Rudy a collection of Urgian love sonnets. Rudy had wept as he read; he hadn’t written since.

  This late at night, he rode a lift free of boneless white poets or other guests, glad of the solitude to think. Cristoffen had left Urgia Prime immediately, rejoining Kearn on the Russell III. The ship had been scheduled to launch. Coincidence or collusion? Rudy frowned as he stood at the door to his room, pausing with his hand on the lock plate. Kearn? He shook his head and opened the door. His former commander might be incompetent and weak, but that was a long way from being an accomplice to cold-blooded murder.

  Still, Rudy knew better than to rule out any suspect. No matter what he believed about Kearn, the Russ’ had full access to Commonwealth records. If Cristoffen had Kearn’s authorization—or his codes—he could abuse that access to trace Zoltan’s past movements. He had to warn Esen.

  No rest for the weary. Rudy stripped on his way to the ’fresher, leaving a trail of clothing from door to stall. Once inside, yawning, he set the water for needle-sharp and cold. He exhaled and plunged his head into the spray, tensing every muscle against the urge to shiver. When instinct tried to force him to breathe, he ignored it. His feet and hands grew numb. It was his choice when to toss his head free of the spray to draw breath in through his nostrils, a breath he took slowly, down the back of his throat, feeling every part of the passage of cool air into his body.

  Under control, no matter how his lungs ached to be filled.

  Rudy turned off the spray, then shook himself like some beast roused from hibernation, his skin raised in gooseflesh. There was nothing careless about his smile now that he was alone. Like old times alone on patrol, he reminded himself, when succumbing to sleep might have cost him his quarry. Or his life.

  Alert and fully awake, he headed for the com terminal by the bed, not bothering to dry off. Cristoffen was-n’t sitting around waiting; why should he?

  Rudy knew what troubled him: Esen was more resourceful than this. Only once before had Rudy waited more than a standard day for her reply, a delay Esen had explained, rather mysteriously, as due to her being held up in shipping, but he shouldn’t worry because everything had been fine once she’d been delivered.

  He might have a suspicious nature to begin with, and a professional career that had encouraged paranoia, but three days? Something was wrong. If so, this was no time to knock on the front door.

  There were other options.

  For instance, Cameron & Ki Exports had a representative here, on Urgia Prime, a broker they shared with other small companies. A suitably coded message should catch Esen’s attention, Rudy decided. An order for rostra sprouts would do. He’d never met any being but Esen who was fond of the poisonous stuff. If Paul noticed first, well, he’d deal with that if it happened. Rudy dried his hands on the cover of his bed and keyed in the request.

  “Hello?”

  At this hour, the last thing Rudy expected was a living voice, especially one sounding Human, young, and anxious. He scowled at the ornate box housing the com. “I want to place an order with Cameron & Ki Exports—”

  “You can’t,” the voice informed him. Rudy’s eyes narrowed. No doubt about the anxiety.

  “Have I keyed in the wrong code?”

  “No, Hom. But—I suppose it’s no secret. Cameron & Ki has gone out of business. For good. I can recommend another shipper for you—”

  “What do you mean, ‘gone out of business’?” Cristoffen couldn’t have found them so soon. Rudy assumed his best captain’s tone: “I place orders with them on a regular basis. I would have been informed. You must be mistaken.”

  “Oh, it’s been a shock to us, too. One day they’re up and running normally—the next? We’ve had to scramble to get shipments rearranged—overtime for everyone, believe me.” The young Human warmed to his topic. “Cameron & Ki weren’t a big part of our warehousing, you realize, but some of their specialty goods were perishable. There were these insect cocoons for Inhaven I thought were going to hatch yesterday and who knows—”

  Rudy interrupted: “What’s happened to Cameron & Ki?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is what’s going around. Some kind of trouble on Minas XII. A criminal investigation. Would you believe it? And no one can find the owners—” the voice broke off.

  A new, harsher one took its place. “This is Captain Silv Largas, of the Vegas Lass. Who is this? Identify yourself! Answer me—”

  Rudy silenced the com, resting his hand on the control.

  He recognized Silv’s voice well enough, if not this sharp, angry version. The two of them had done their best to finish a keg of beer during his last stopover on Minas XII, celebrating Silv’s assignment to the ’Lass. Access to Joel’s well-stocked cellar was one of the perks of being a regular guest in the Largas’ home, a guest Joel outspokenly courted to captain one of his ships. The courting was real. Only Rudy was not.

  Largas’ interest in his skills, his friendship, gave Rudy an excuse for his infrequent stops at Minas XII; otherwise he risked drawing the attention of watchers like Cristoffen to Paul and Esen. But when he was there, Rudy paid the price of sharing Esen’s secret: he couldn’t let down his guard, even when celebrating; he couldn’t acknowledge Paul as kin; and he couldn’t allow a closer connection than casual friendship, however tempting Joel’s offer of a future.

  Hardest of all, he had to endure the nights when too much celebrating
rolled Joel’s mind into the past, and his deep, gravelly voice would tell of the flight from Garson’s World and the arrival of Death. Others who remembered would gather close and avoid each other’s eyes; those who’d been too young would start at shadows and shiver. The room would fill with silent, attentive forms as the Largas clan relived their darkest hour. Joel would stop, abruptly, as if surprised to see his family, then wander off to bed. The rest would exchange looks, then do the same.

  Esen was wise to guard her secret from such friends as these.

  Silv Largas, a proud new captain, intercepting calls for Cameron & Ki. In the middle of the night. On Urgia Prime.

  Rudy drew his hand back slowly, watched it tremble, watched it clench into a fist, watched how the trembling didn’t stop until he drove the fist into the com and shattered it, blood mixing with white splinters of delicately filigreed wood. Answer Silv Largas? Not until he had proof the Largas clan hadn’t been involved in whatever had transpired on Minas XII.

  Rudy could guess part of it. He knew the measure of his cousin. Under any circumstances, even if Joel himself stood in the way, Paul would make sure Esen escaped. That didn’t guarantee anyone’s safety. Or that things hadn’t been ugly.

  Time to make a discreet exit. Rudy pulled on a pair of used spacer coveralls, pausing only to wrap his scraped knuckles. He picked what he’d take with him, packing quickly but surely. The stunner on his hip was for show. He secured a blister stick up his left sleeve; its mate rode his calf. The closetful of low-budget tourist clothing could stay, as could the cases of clever, invasive devices sure to worry hotel staff. He’d already sent whatever recordings he’d acquired offworld. What he needed now was speed, not subtlety.

  The scorched data cube, likely worthless, he taped to the skin beneath his ribs.

  The door chimed.

  Esen’s message? A shame he’d broken the com terminal—the night clerk must have had to slither her way up to this floor.

  If it was the Urgian, or her servo assistant.

  Rudy checked the impulse to answer, instead taking a soundless step to move out of alignment with the door. He’d used an alias to book this room, but hadn’t bothered to disguise his appearance or hide the source of tonight’s call to the broker. Regrettable lapses. He really must be more careful in future.

  A second chime.

  He made up his mind. No taking chances. Sweeping up his bag, Rudy went to the door that connected his room to its neighbor, opening it with care before slipping through into darkness, finding his way past furniture conveniently in the same location as the room he’d left. No worries of disturbing a sleeping occupant—booking the adjoining room under another name had been a reasonable precaution, in his line of work.

  Before he could take another step, lights turned on as if to prove his point.

  So much for worrying about the door chime, Rudy thought, smiling his broad, careless smile. In case that might be insufficient reassurance for the six overly-armed figures in black Kraal military gear waiting for him, he dropped his bag and made sure his arms were the appropriate distance from his sides.

  Cristoffen’s Kraal backer and a scorched data cube taped to his skin. This could, Rudy decided grimly, get interesting.

  It was definitely going to delay his search for Paul and Esen.

  12: Cove Morning

  FROM the air, Mouda Cove took a significant bite out of the eastern shore of the peninsula, spitting out a chain of rocky islands that simultaneously protected its deep, tranquil waters and threatened attempts to seek that tranquillity. A crust of bright yellow warn-off stations could be seen on the ocean side of each, several bent and twisted, as if klaxons and lights weren’t always enough to deter the truly obsessed boater.

  Had this been an ocean traveled by boats, that is. I’d peered out my window port as the aircar approached for landing, my suit the blue of calm and attentive interest, admiring the cheery twinkling of light reflected from the water’s surface even more for knowing the darkness beneath. Prumbinat’s single ocean was, to put it mildly, a little deeper than most and far more secretive than any my Human companion had yet experienced. I was looking forward to his reaction.

  Other than its unusual depth and paranoid hazard markers, Mouda Cove might have been any semitropical paradise. Well, I squinted as I looked around, it could have used some vegetation closer to the shoreline than fifty meters, but overgrazing was always an issue at this latitude. The few trees and shrubs that managed height were perched atop isolated towers of dead coral. They looked down on the lovely beach like castle dwellers under siege.

  The Prumbins had, of course, kept the center aisle of the beach free of anything crushable. Common sense, given the nocturnal wanderings of their Drossy herds—gentle creatures, if ungainly on land. Washed-pink buildings lined the outer arms of the cove; awnings of purple, yellow, and red flapped gently in the wind to offer welcome shade, bordered with more of the brilliant yellow warn-offs. The ocean might have been at our feet, but even as a Lishcyn I couldn’t have heard the tiny waves kissing the white sand. Marashaci music thumped from every patio, despite the lack of conscious dancers at this early hour. Prumbins, like their livestock, were most active at night. Such wonderfully tropical music, I thought, humming to myself. Steamy melody with a sting of metallic percussion. It translated nicely.

  “So, Es, where’s the transport?” Paul’s eyes blinked at me, magnified by the domelike lenses of his goggles into black-centered whorls of gray, rimmed in bloodshot white. They looked, I decided, somewhat like owlish fruit. Or stale hors d’oeuvres. “You said it would be waiting—and we don’t have much time.”

  He was covered from eyeball to toes in a gaudy green e-suit we’d bought at a stand beside the main wharf. Paul had insisted on something made for humanoids, so we’d had to take the only one available. Had my Human been a lesser being, I would have suspected him of being quite satisfied by the color, knowing it signaled humiliation and despair to my present form. I refused to believe he’d deliberately distress me. He did need a new one. We hadn’t been able to clean his Oieta-suit, a thankless task we’d left for the freighter’s crew should they want to salvage the valuable garment.

  The Prumbin who’d sold us this suit hadn’t budged an appendage to help me squeeze Paul into the ill-fitting thing. Its reluctance could have simply been a species-specific desire to remain as inactive as possible while the sun was up, but there could have been another reason. I’d seen its row of nostrils snap shut as we approached, despite this lending a nasal pitch to its voice. While I couldn’t detect any odor, unless the substance was dissolved in the fluid circulating over my body, Paul had assured me that he smelled worse after our journey in the freighter—and his misadventure—than the occasional carcass being torn apart by crustaceans along the waterline. He’d done this to clarify why our aircar pilot had insisted we sit in the back of her vehicle. And kept her window open.

  Even if Paul hadn’t smelled like something overdue for burial, the Prumbin had no need to be pleasant. It was the only e-suit dealer within sight and knew full well what my dear web-kin didn’t. Yet.

  Other than the aircar returning to the Port City, a suit was Paul’s only way to leave Mouda Cove.

  “A modicum of patience, Human,” I told him. It was probably less than mature of me to have enjoyed stuffing my friend back into this corresponding garment, but at least he didn’t have to endure having his antennae bent.

  The thought made my entire body itch. It wasn’t so much that I was uncomfortable—my current form would have been flopping on the sand in agonized death throes by now if exposed to air—but I was missing most of my sensory perceptions. Tasting the water recycling around myself, however artificially fragrant, was no substitute for the ocean so close. I held this form simply by promising myself I’d be out of the suit in a few moments.

  Paul might beat me to it. He’d put down the piece of luggage we’d bought—too big for our few belongings, but I hoped to remedy that—and wa
s tugging at his neck fasteners again, even though I knew they were as well-fitted as possible. “Patient!” he grumbled—words and tone quite nicely transferred into pulses against the tympana lining my lower arms. “I should never have let you talk me into this—this sightseeing excursion! In case you forget, Old Hound, we aren’t exactly safe here.”

  “Where would we be safe, Paul?” I fluttered a gesture of sorrow with my pre-gills; the suit turned a mournful gray in translation. Then I saw the water just offshore heave itself into a round smoothness as something began rising to the wharf. “There!” I said in triumph, bobbing up and down with excitement. “Our transport!”

  “Esen ...” My name seemed to dissolve as Paul’s magnified eyes blinked and blinked again.

  “Isn’t this a sight worth seeing?” I asked.

  The wharf, its pylons set deep into the sloping beach, extended from where we stood to a considerable distance into the middle of Mouda Cove. The reason for its length was now apparent, as our transport calmly docked alongside, stern hanging beyond the wharf and bow grinding gently toward us on the sand until sighing to a stop.

  We had to look up.

  And up. I bobbed almost constantly, colored bright yellow with delight by Paul’s frozen posture. Ha! Thought he’d seen everything by now, did he?

  There were bigger things in Prumbinat’s ocean, but a Busfish was the largest I’d be willing to stand beside.

  I should have expected Paul could take a Busfish in stride. After all, he’d lived with me for over fifty years. Still, even he took a moment to stare at what was, to Ersh’s knowledge, the largest sea-dwelling creature to be domesticated. There were other partnerships between the small-scale smart and larger-scale not-so, including the living—and mobile—moss cities of the Ycl, but the Busfish reigned supreme in terms of harnessed biological power.