Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Paul laughed, stretching arms back to snag a pillow for his head. “Silly Esippet. Do you really think I’d indulge in seafood while you’re so shrimply? It wouldn’t be the same. But it was delicious. You should try it—next time you have a mouth.”

  I flashed a faint yellow, oddly relieved by this return to insufferable behavior, including his obvious effort to tweak my curiosity. I’d have ignored the latter and gone on to more important topics, but, after all, I wouldn’t stay in this form—and on this side of the menu—forever. “So tell me about this delicious new dish.”

  “Erpic Shell Soup. A most intriguing blend of flavors.” He closed his eyes, as though to better remember the taste. “Not to mention more colorful than your stunning self—although I admit having bright blue bits of shell suddenly pop up through the yellow broth is startling at first. A shame you can’t try it.”

  Automatically careful of secrets, I didn’t simply say “I have.” But it wasn’t a meal I’d had for a century. Or one I would willingly have again.

  Erpic Shell Soup was a typical Kraal delicacy. Eating it was a measure of trust in one’s host—or in that host’s cooking staff, since preparation involved several complex steps to remove the natural toxins from the animal’s shell. Naturally, Skalet had chosen to serve it when the Web had gathered in a system near her space. Her way of showing courtesy to those who had traveled farthest.

  We’d been in various forms, with Ersh’s permission. Only Skalet and Lesy had been Human. I’d taken my first mouthful, unsure if one should swallow the hard pieces or chew them—a risky procedure without fully closing lips—when Ersh had suddenly flipped over her bowl. She’d extended her claws into the table, roaring with rage while I’d frozen in my seat, wondering what I’d done now.

  But it was at Skalet that Ersh had stared, her eyes dilated in unmistakable predator-fix on our web-kin.

  “How dare you try ephemeral tricks on me!” Ersh had growled, the sound from deep in her mammoth chest. “How dare you risk your own flesh!”

  Skalet had known better than to move—or even breathe. I remembered watching her Human skin lose all its color beneath its tattoos. I remembered being amazed that Skalet, the most careful of us all, couldn’t make soup.

  Then, when Ersh hadn’t immediately launched herself over the table at her throat, Skalet had taken a cautious breath to answer: “An accident, Eldest. I’ve been adding trace amounts of duras to my meals—to increase this form’s immunity. It didn’t occur to me to check which soup stock I used today.” There’d been a flash of rebellion in her eyes. “Not all of us are free to cycle on the spot to remove ingested toxins.” Something three of our web-kin had already done.

  Skalet had continued to hold form in defiance, I’d been too shocked to react, and—I decided sometime after the fact—Ersh had preferred remaining something that could snarl and potentially flay skin from the target of her rage.

  She hadn’t, of course. Well, there’d been snarling. Once sure I’d be ignored by both, I’d cycled into something small that could evacuate the room, removing the duras extract from my system in the process, and awaited the outcome with Ansky. My web-kin had been horrified. I’d huddled around my secret, understanding Skalet as never before. She must have managed to get duras plants to the Kraal after all . . .

  And then had to fear her own poison.

  “Es?”

  Nothing more than coincidence, I told myself, angry at being distracted by my own memory. Ersh’s was bad enough. I unlocked the deaths’ grip my limbs had taken on one another and didn’t quite lie to my friend: “I’m sorry, Paul, but the subject of—lunch—seems to upset this me. Could we talk about something else?”

  “Of course.” Paul frowned slightly. He held a hand to one ear and raised his brows in question. Ah. My careful Human wished me to confirm our privacy first.

  I sampled the water slipping over my gills—ocean-wild and full of food—and felt the connection to the Abyss and Prumbinat’s wide-open seas. “My rooms are open to the world. Yours are not. The difference? Clearfoil.” I tapped the slender tip of one antenna gently against the material separating our worlds.

  The controls to invoke the exclusion casing were embedded throughout the floor. It was a simple matter of keying in my room code. Paul and I watched as red streaks of clearfoil grew across the force mesh, blended into a smooth membrane, then disappeared. There might be nothing separating me from the Abyss, except that the water inside my room became more civilized to my senses—though still swarming with tasty bits.

  I continued: “If you try to use certain equipment within clearfoil, it produces an interfering resonance that scrambles the information contained in recordings or transmissions. The clearfoil itself clouds permanently and must be replaced—an expensive nuisance. The Prumbins almost stopped using it for construction, until someone developed a com system that included the clearfoil itself to communicate between physically connected rooms. That system is licensed for use only here.” I waved two pairs of arms. “An old acquaintance of mine was involved.” Mixs hadn’t bragged, but even Ersh had been impressed. “You did notice most suites do not touch each other; they don’t, unless that’s requested by all parties.”

  “I’d wondered,” Paul said, sitting up as if knowing we were safe to be ourselves had energized him. “So we can talk freely?”

  “One more thing, first.” I turned a thoughtful blue as I stroked the clearfoil with both antennae, learning nothing except it had a slightly salty taste and felt as impenetrable as the metal hull of a starship. “There’s another unique property of clearfoil. I haven’t actually tried this myself ...”

  But the mere thought was enough to lose my hold on this form, I cycled . . .

  ... feeling almost delirious relief as I became myself and could feel the drumming of the impatient magma below, sense its tides and movements, know the tension building within the solid crust of the Brim had enough energy to shoulder continents aside. The press of water on my every surface refined my shape into a perfect sphere rather than a teardrop. I quite liked it.

  Before I became too entranced with the comfort of my new shape, the thrill of hearing gravity sing, or the exhilaration of being so close to shifting magnetism, I tightened my attention to the room . . .

  And its floor, through which I should be able to pass without risking Paul’s only protection from the pressure, water, and cold of the Abyss. Or risking me.

  To my web-self, clearfoil was almost kin—a mutable form of matter I understood on an instinctive level. I’d never interacted with it before, having caught a good dose of caution from an argument I’d overheard between my elders. Mixs had been expressing a scientific curiosity about whether I’d become stuck permanently if I attempted the passage; Ansky had rebutted that she wouldn’t be the first to share with Ersh if I did. Terrified, I’d vowed I’d never let Mixs coax me into trying anything so dangerous. She’d been disappointed when I refused, but I wouldn’t tell her why.

  I wondered suddenly: Had my Elders been so callous—or had I been tricked? In retrospect, this seemed all too similar to an argument between Char and Paul about whether they should let the twins use the stove, an argument staged when I’d cued their parents that I’d heard the excited breathing of two hidden children. To my knowledge, neither Luara nor Tomas had made further attempts to melt their toys in the appliance.

  Cheered by the novel idea that I might have had some parental care after all, albeit of the “hope you survive” kind, I prepared to join Paul. First, I gathered mass from the living things surrounding me on every side, stopping when I’d assimilated what I would need on the other side of the clearfoil. The clearfoil itself was appetizing, but was definitely off limits.

  The Prumbins used the wet corridors to circulate their internal supply of seawater between suites, just as they used the dry ones to recirculate air. My surface absorbed chemical information from the current flowing through my room, including some complex proteins that I identified as exc
ess pheromones from someone else’s moment of joy. But I couldn’t sense Paul as anything but a source of heat below me.

  It would be wise if he wasn’t right below. In fact, it would be entirely more sensible if the Human took shelter inside his air lock before I tried penetrating the clearfoil. Why, I thought with some aggravation, did I always think of such things after losing the ability to speak? My com attachments were floating about somewhere in my room. I’d have to reglue them when I returned to my Oieta-self.

  Enough delay, I could hear Ersh now. You’ll survive. Mixs and Ansky had done this all the time. I drew upon their memories of the process and lost my apprehension in the wonder of it.

  The clearfoil didn’t live, as the Web defined life, but it listened. I concentrated on focusing my web-mass to a point, then extended that point to barely touch the clearfoil that made the floor. Other extensions of me went to the walls, to counter any tendency to float out of position. Neutral buoyancy was highly overrated. Then, I vibrated the point of me in contact with the floor, as had my web-kin.

  No response. Before I could register disappointment or plan to try again, I felt a strangeness in the room around me. As if part of me understood before the rest, my point was allowed through the clearfoil.

  Instantly, I could taste the air in Paul’s room, and sense his accelerated breathing in the carbon dioxide against my surface. Perhaps, I thought, he wasn’t sure if the blue pouring from his ceiling was me or the beginning of a flood.

  The blue was me, of course, or rather a tube made of me. Having “talked” my way through the clearfoil, I was using the narrow space to funnel most of my mass through. It was a race as the portion of my outer surface in contact with the clearfoil had already been assimilated into more of it; that change was spreading like a stain.

  Ersh, it was fast! While this was no time to be thinking, I understood now why this experience would have been dangerous for a younger Esen. This me could ignore the horror of sacrificing web-mass, having survived worse, and I’d made sure the outer rim of me contained no memories to lose. In a final effort, my insides surged through the tube and plopped onto Paul’s bed, abandoning the smallest amount of me possible.

  I cycled quickly enough to see what appeared to be a lumpy blue patch in the clearfoil give up its identity and become clear itself.

  “I may leave through the door,” I said, feeling somewhat subdued.

  My Human didn’t give me time to say more than that, pulling me off his bed into one of those too-tight and anatomically-inconvenient hugs he appeared to find necessary after a long separation. Perhaps this one was more necessary than others, I thought, disturbed to feel him shake. Rather than squirming free, which I usually did, I patted him a couple of times on the back.

  The shaking abruptly grew worse, as if my gesture had harmed him. “Are you ill?” I demanded, pushing him away so I could see his dear face.

  Paul’s eyes were spilling liquid. Some had landed on my fur, but I decided not to complain until he was calmer. Instead, I used my paws on his shoulders to guide him to one of the two oversized couches in the room, pushing him into its softness before crouching in front.

  My Human ignored the moisture on his face. His mouth worked for a moment without words coming out, then he said in a very odd voice: “I’ll be all right, Es. Give me a minute.” He ran one trembling hand along my damp shoulder and down my arm, as if he’d forgotten this shape of me. I held myself steady, not understanding anything but that I’d somehow caused him pain by appearing like this.

  “I’m sorry—” I started to say, a whine under the words.

  “None of it is your fault. None of it.” His hand went to my shoulder again, stroked downward. It trembled less, I thought, which was just as well since I was beginning to shake with the urge to leap up and run. He felt it and stopped, bringing his hand back into his lap, then said, more quietly, but with no less anguish: “Forgive me, Esen. I didn’t realize how alone I’ve felt since leaving Minas XII. Touch is—a Human need.”

  I lunged up to give his cheek a quick lick, tasting salt and Paul, then sat at his feet. I rested my chin on his hand so I could see his expressions. He wasn’t asking me to become Human, but to understand Human. It was never easy, I sighed to myself, and resolutely prepared to try. “You are upset,” I said carefully. “Why? Is it still your anger at what happened or are you grieving for what has been lost? You told me you were prepared for anything, that you could walk away from your life on Minas XII as easily as you did your life on your ship.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” His eyelids closed tightly, squeezing free a runnel of new moisture. When they opened again, I whined at the bleak look in his eyes. “Then consider it poetic justice, Old Blob, that I finally know, here—” for some reason he put his hand over his heart, “—how you must have felt all this time. Must still feel. To be the only one of your kind. To be so terribly alone—”

  “I am not alone. You are not alone. You are of the Web of Esen,” I protested, quite alarmed by all this. “We are one.”

  Paul lifted the pendant in his hand, my gift to him of web-mass, cryo-preserved. I could have sensed its life, this close, had I remained in web-form. “We are friends, dear friends,” he said, as if correcting me. “Family.”

  Confused, I wrinkled my snout at him. “The meanings are compatible. Aren’t they?”

  He opened his mouth as though to say something, then hesitated. His eyes no longer leaked. “Of course they are,” he said very gently.

  “And you are my web-kin,” I said, wanting some things very clear.

  The hint of a smile. “Web-kin, indeed. As you are my family.”

  Though it was a gesture foreign to a body that preferred the camaraderie of a good bump at hip and shoulder, or the friendly chewing of an ear, I put my paws over Paul’s hands for a moment. “We are safe here. We have friends still. Rudy. Once we learn who is behind this, we will find a way to be safe everywhere. I—”

  Paul tilted his head when I paused. “I’m enjoying this list of yours. What’s next?”

  “I want dessert,” I stated. “I just noticed this form hasn’t eaten.”

  I didn’t want to tell him the truth, not with the sadness still haunting his eyes, for me, for himself. I was no longer as Young as I’d been.

  I understood what Paul hadn’t said and why.

  A future, even safety, could never replace what—who—we’d both lost.

  Otherwhere

  “SACRISS XIII, it is.”

  Rudy picked up the Kraal blade, turning it over and over in his strong, scarred hands. Sybil had given him this token, plus a pouchful of data cubes containing bureaucratic mundania: shipping records, genealogies, tax rolls, property transfers, military records. As the names had been replaced with codes, the former patroller did wonder how she expected him to ferret out her traitor. Especially with only these clues.

  He’d scanned much of it, his attention caught by two items that likely didn’t tell him anything about Sybil’s target, but did reveal more about the Kraal. First had been a newsmag report describing a fabulous find: a household’s-worth of artifacts, hundreds of years old, recovered from an Ervickian warehouse on Dranaris, several months ago, presumably without the new owner’s approval. The artifacts would remain in a communal vault while the varied claimants sorted out ownership. From what Rudy knew of the Kraal and their obsession with family history, that translated as a flood of attempted thefts and assassinations, probably enough to lock entire Tribes in bitter and violent dispute for another few generations, and possibly sufficient to redefine affiliations—the equivalent of toppling governments. Some treasures, he thought, were better left unfound.

  More telling were the criminal records: remarkably few for a Human culture, unless Sybil had been selective. Rudy didn’t think so. To his understanding, very little was illegal among Kraal. However, what was tended to be punishable by loss of life or, what was essentially the same, loss of affiliation. Without affiliation, an indi
vidual became a legitimate target for any and all Kraal, whether the intent was theft or simply to test the potency of a new weapon before buying it. Without affiliation, that individual’s family lost status with every day of his or her continued existence, making suicide the preferred means of removing such contamination from the family line.

  Which meant the Kraal living on Minas XII, Meony-ro, either retained his affiliations despite the effort to remove his tattoos, or was not only a lawbreaker, but a dishonorable one. Interesting. Rudy tapped the knife blade against the scorched data cube in front of him, included with the others now that he was safely on his own. Having spent a considerable portion of his adult life pretending to be what he was not, Rudy was willing to gamble the Kraal could be as well. A spy within arm’s reach of Paul and Esen.

  The knife began to shake in his hand. Rudy carefully put it aside, as carefully as he put aside any emotion that might distract him. The weapon had been sealed against contamination when he received it. He’d already extracted fingerprints, protein and heat signatures, and DNA. There’d even been a trace of dried blood on the tip.

  Before being sealed, the knife had been handled by only one individual: a Human female, presumably Kraal, approximately middle-aged, give or take a decade. No genetic disorders or diseases detected, so his comp had generated an image based on optimum health. Tall, long-boned, strong featured. If athletic, the musculature would be rope-thin and wiry rather than tend to bulk. Thin lips. Eyes wide-set and slanted slightly upward under a high brow, their irises so dark a blue as to appear black. The type of eyes that saw distance and kept secrets. Pale blond, fair-skinned—relatively rare traits, the easiest to alter.

  Rudy had memorized the face and form, then erased all data from his system. The image wouldn’t be enough to identify her, not if she’d made any effort to change her appearance, not if her life had taken a different path. He could imagine a hundred ways that same face could alter over time. The tattooing of a Kraal was only one.