Hidden in Sight

by Julie E. Czerneda

  She could date it more precisely. Three hundred and forty-three years ago: when the Kraslakor crypt had been breached, its treasures stolen; when Uriel-ro had died, his canister—with its secret—placed in the Mocktap chest; and when, three hundred and forty-three years ago, Sybil-ru had died of her new poison. Duras.

  Mocktap half-closed her eyes. Poisons that effective were expensive. Had the artifacts been the price? If so, why just bury them for three hundred years?

  Could S’kal-ru be that old?

  An update activating within her files interrupted Mocktap’s train of thought. She keyed to accept it, reading the confirmation with relief. The weapon worked. The plans for it, and other devices of S’kal-ru’s design, had been given to Mocktap’s affiliates twenty years ago for the construction of prototypes. They’d had limited success with a force mesh, none with the scanners, but the weapon had showed promise. A small amount of a specific target material, of unknown origin or properties, had been provided. S’kal-ru, however, had ordered the weapon’s test postponed without explanation.

  Mocktap had found it expedient to ignore those orders. The sample was now so much dust; her staff had no idea how to obtain more or how the weapon had worked at all. Asking S’kal-ru would be—unwise. It didn’t matter. She had what she needed. Mocktap specified the destinations of the prototypes, then erased the message along with any record of her com signal. She leaned back, shutting down the comp with a stab of one finger, waiting as it hummed through the steps that would protect its secrets.

  Picco’s Moon. Its mountain had revealed more than strange minerals and stolen heirlooms. Its ownership, though muddied by an expert, had been traced in part to the very Lishcyn S’kal-ru loved to torment, the one she’d claimed possessed some of the biological technology of the weapon which had destroyed Mocktap’s ships, including the secret of its flight through space.

  Lies don’t live alone, Mocktap reminded herself, nodding with satisfaction. She’d been right to look elsewhere, to turn her attention to a growing circle of names: Esen/Esolesy-ki, Paul Ragem/Cameron, Meony-ro, Lionel Kearn and his crew, Janet Chase, an Ervickian named Able Joe, the disbanded crew of a Tly cruiser, Joel Largas and his kin, and the delectable Rudy Lefebvre. With all her skill, she’d probed for the weaknesses in their affiliations, sought there for information. Med reports regarding truth drugs widened her search. Unforeseen conspiracies focused it.

  Finally, she’d reexamined the reports stolen from Lionel Kearn, the ones S’kal-ru had ridiculed, and dared believe in shapeshifting monsters.

  Only she knew. No one else could be trusted. Mocktap assigned her affiliates different tasks, communicating only through her, never to one another. She took the unprecedented and shameful step of using non-Kraal. Finally, as S’kal-ru left to act on her own, Mocktap had left the safety of Kraal space to do the same, sensing her chance had come.

  Time to stop hunting for a “biological weapon” that had never existed. Time to start hunting the creatures that did. The House of Mocktap would no longer be a pawn in this game between S’kal-ru and Esolesy-ki. The same game her ancestor, Sybil-ru, had played and lost three hundred and forty-three years ago.

  Ever so lightly, careful not to break the skin—yet, Mocktap drew the scalpel-sharp edge of one fingernail across the marks of affiliation binding her to a being who wasn’t Kraal, or Human, at all.

  How old was S’kal-ru? The question no longer mattered.

  She wouldn’t be growing any older.

  20: Abyss Night

  THIS was my birth-form.

  I sought Skalet-memory; my own held nothing like this. It helped me look in the mirror in her washroom, kept my blood-soaked paws steady as I used the sealer.

  She wasn’t taking it from me.

  “Esen. Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

  Dear Paul thought I’d come in here to cycle and change. He hadn’t expected me to be able to stand, much less demand privacy. No wonder he called from the other side of the door.

  I grunted something, timing the sound to match the moment when I stopped sealing to pry another shard of cartilage from my nasal passage.

  Skalet’s washroom had been battle-ready. I’d expected no less, having seen her preference in living quarters before. It contained what I needed to make emergency repairs to this form, including a numbing spray that worked almost too well. My good eye was frozen open and watered constantly, but it wouldn’t be much longer before I could cycle.

  Paul’s patience didn’t last that long. I heard him discover I’d locked the door. As I passed the sealer under the swollen shut eye, he came through regardless. Presumably Skalet expected some damage to her suite, given the quality of her care for guests.

  “What the—” the Human hurried to my side, then froze, looking over my shoulder into the mirror. I begged him with my eye to leave me in peace, unable to open my mouth to speak. I knew it would be hard, given what he could see. My Lanivarian muzzle was a delicate, complex structure; Skalet’s fist had rearranged most of one side. I supposed I should be grateful to still have a head. I’d seen her Human hands drive through slabs of wood following a disagreement with Ersh; I’d foolishly envied her strength.

  That had been temper. This? Whether Skalet knew it or not, she’d struck as hard as she had not from anger, but to keep me from this form, to remove the shape that marked me as alien among our former Web. Even Ersh, I remembered sadly, staring at my dear Human’s face in the mirror instead of my own, had known this shape, with its reminder of my non-Web birth, unnerved both Skalet and Mixs.

  Another reason I refused to let Skalet take it from me.

  “Let me finish,” Paul offered, his face grim and set. There was a reddening down one side of his neck, purple toward the base—I assumed more of Skalet’s gentle touch. I handed my Human the med kit and sat rather quickly on the bench, happy not to look at the ruin of my beautiful snout any longer.

  Temporary ruin, I reminded myself. Nothing that wouldn’t heal, with time and care, but I had none of the first and only this rough patchwork of the second. Form-memory was absolute. When I cycled back into this form, my favorite Esen, I’d re-create how I was at this moment. Consciously or not, Skalet had counted on my cycling as soon as possible—to free myself of pain now, at the price of facing pain later.

  But I had no intention of cycling until this form was fit to move safely and could survive, if necessary, on its own.

  She wasn’t in control of me.

  Paul pressed something cool into the joint of my jaw. “Try to speak. Carefully.”

  “Awrhggh.” I drew my benumbed tongue back inside my teeth and tried again. “Dahn oou,” I managed, relieved to feel my lower jaw capable of fine movement. Not as serious as it looked, then. I let my tail beat against his knees.

  Paul cupped his hand along the intact side of my head, leaning over me so he could look into my open eye. “This is the best I can do, Es. It’s going to—” He hesitated, then said honestly: “It’s going to hurt like hell when the numbness wears off.”

  I didn’t bother telling him that would be the instant I returned to this form, since any nonmetabolized medication, poison, or food wasn’t part of form-memory. The sealer, an artificial membrane that bonded instantly to skin, I would remember; that was why Skalet stocked this in her kit, and not other types of bandages.

  Pain, I’d learned to survive. Ersh would have been gratified.

  Standing required Paul’s help, but I made it back to the sink under my own power and began to wash my paws. I needed to give the medications as much time to work as I could, but the red stains sickened me. Paul, understanding, grabbed a damp sponge to work most of the drying blood from my shoulder and chest. My skin shuddered wherever he touched it. I hated wet fur.

  “She’s coming,” Paul warned, staring toward the bedroom.

  Without turning to see if he was right, I released my hold on my injured self and cycled . . .

  ... moisture puddling around what were f
eet, five-toed, small and tidy, with a broken nail on the smallest toe of the right foot.

  None too soon. Paul steadied me as I gasped and staggered with the relief of being whole again. He barely had time to toss a towel over the med kit and bloody sponge, then pick up a comb to press to my hair before impatient footsteps announced Skalet’s arrival.

  Paul and I looked at her in the mirror, a matched set of pale Human faces, both with hair threatening our eyes, both with expressions that could best be described as “guarded.” Though my face was significantly lower, despite my instinctive stretch to my full height. “You could have knocked,” I told her, scowling.

  As well complain to the Abyss—or Ersh. “So this is the current Human version of Esen-alit-Quar. Finally, some manners.” Skalet surveyed me from head to foot, then back again, her face oddly expressionless. “What do you call this self?”

  “B-bess.” I shivered, starting to feel the chill of the air against this unprotected skin. Fur was more practical.

  “Hurry and dress, fool.” She paused at the door, eyes turning to Paul. “You need to change as well. Even Prumbins will notice that much blood.”

  Neither of us so much as blinked until hearing the bedroom door close behind her.

  “She’s right. There are clothes on the bed.”

  I stared up at him. “I’m sorry, Paul.”

  This drew a grim look. “You aren’t the one who should be.” Before I could say anything else, my Human tousled my hair. “Web-being, dangerous, powerful, unpredictable. I remember the drill: when in doubt, shut up, let you handle her, be careful. Right now,” he paused for emphasis, “that means doing what she says.”

  Reassured, I followed him into a larger room I didn’t recognize. Probably something to do with staggering through with my only working eye barely able to see. I spun around to take a better look, something this form did with a pleasing light grace. And a tendency, which I quelled under the circumstances, to keep spinning in order to experience an even more pleasing dizziness. “Skalet must have asked Ansky to design it,” I concluded, admiring the use of billowing red silk above, beside, and on the bed. The paintings I ascribed to Skalet’s taste: no improbable couplings occurred on her walls, only desert landscapes with starry skies, beautiful and barren.

  “Es. Can we talk here?”

  I didn’t feel like spinning any longer. “It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “We have no secrets left. But I doubt she’d bother listening. Skalet wouldn’t care to hear us become upset or angry or start to Yell At The Top Of Our Lungs!” For a small form, this one could put out a remarkable volume when motivated.

  “Very mature.” But his eyes remembered smiling.

  “I can be,” I told him quietly, resting my fingers on a dry patch of his sleeve. The once-handsome blue shirt was dark with drying blood. Mine, at least. “Skalet was responsible for what happened—no one else. I’m sorry I doubted your choice of—companions—in the past. You were right all along.”

  Something eased in his face. “Can I get that in writing?”

  “Not likely.” His Human levity covered a bone-deep worry, one I thought I understood. I hadn’t let him warn the Group or Rudy. It was logical, in Human terms, for him to now consider Skalet a threat to them and his family. “All she wanted was us, here, Paul,” I began, hoping to reassure him. “I believe that. I know Skalet. She would consider it inefficient to pay attention to anyone or anything outside her own scheming. It’s of no particular interest to her that she’s turned Joel and his family against us. It was a tactic to bring us here and will be our problem, not hers, if we’re foolish enough to try and reclaim that life. Her not caring, Paul, is the best protection any of your friends, our friends,” I corrected, “could have.”

  Paul studied my face. I hoped whatever he could read of its Human structure and expression reinforced the message I wanted him to understand. They were safe; we weren’t.

  “If you say so, Old Blob,” he said finally. “I’ve seen the results of her caring, that’s for sure.” My Human pulled off his bloodstained shirt with a grimace and threw it to one side.

  Two piles of brown clothing were hiding amid the red bedcovers. Paul started to toss me a set, then stopped, examining them. “Hasn’t she seen your Human self before?” he asked, as if puzzled.

  “Not for years. But she’d know how I’d appear, my approximate age,” I explained. “Why? Don’t they look right?”

  He held up a shirt that wouldn’t pass over my head. I frowned. “It’s not like Skalet to be wrong.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t. These aren’t new.” Paul started looking around the room as I rummaged through the clothing for what might fit. “Ah.” A satisfied sound as he pulled a carry-sack from behind the bed. It had been forced open.

  “The Humans on the Busfish,” I guessed. “She sat with that family in order to steal their luggage.”

  “And ident.” He held up a chit. “The Quinn family from Adamershome. My guess? Skalet followed us here to Prumbinat, but didn’t have the time or means to bring what she needed to leave again. Which implies she’s acting on her own. No squads in black armor, hiding in the closet.”

  I crammed my lower half into a wrap-style skirt that likely was supposed to cover the ankles of its wearer, but came to my knees. There was no option but to take the undershirt from Paul’s pile to cover my top half. And most of my lower half again. At least every item of clothing was the same dull brown. I hunted for footwear. “They’ve served their purpose,” I said, reluctant to remind him. “Skalet wouldn’t risk our secret. Beside, she doesn’t need help.”

  “No. She doesn’t.”

  Odd how the Human voice could instill so much meaning into so few words: bitterness, frustration, resignation. I stopped and looked at Paul. He was sitting on the edge of the bed—a somewhat awkward position, given the slippery nature of the bedcover and the softness of the mattress. I watched him pull on the heavy brown sweater I’d left him, saw him put the pendant underneath, against his skin.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Paul felt my gaze and grew still as he looked up at me, his hands coming to rest on his thighs. “Esen. What is it?”

  They’d lunched together. Skalet, as Wendy, had introduced my dearest friend to Erpic soup.

  There was no such thing as coincidence.

  This face must have revealed something to him, because even as I knew, and whirled to run for the door, Paul was in motion. He put himself in my way, held me by the arms as I raged at him. “Let me go! You don’t understand! She’s poisoned you—”

  He wouldn’t let go. “I know.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you know’?” I whispered, suddenly unable to move. The dry corridor . . . their time alone . . . she’d planned it in order to tell him? I stared into his face. His willing answers to her questions, his sitting so quietly at the table when I arrived. It made terrible sense now. “We have to get the antidote,” I said, trying to twist free and seriously tempted to kick. “Skalet! Give it to me!” I shouted, just in case I’d been wrong and she was eavesdropping.

  “Stop and think, Esen. Please.” The desperation in his eyes, more than his grip, made me subside. Paul’s hands tightened on my arms as if making sure he had my attention. “The antidote won’t be here, if she’s telling the truth. Why risk our finding it? She said what she gave me is slow-acting. She wants to hold this over us for days, maybe weeks. Time is on our side. And,” this almost too lightly, “it could all be a lie.”

  My feet felt as though they were sinking into the floor, as if I were web-mass and helpless to prevent my being assimilated by the clearfoil. “It isn’t a lie.”

  “No,” he agreed with a heavy sigh. “I don’t think it is.” Paul loosened his grip, rubbing my arms gently where he’d taken hold of me, as if to erase the memory of our struggle. “She said you’d appreciate the irony. I didn’t bother telling her I could as well.” A hollow laugh. “After all, you told me how Skalet originally tried to steal duras p
lants from Ersh and you’d stopped her.”

  Oh, I appreciated it, I told myself bitterly. But not for so innocent a reason. I hadn’t told Paul a Human had died when I’d recklessly interfered with Skalet’s plans, those 343 years and a smattering of days ago. Now, poison from the same source was killing another Human, cell by cell, because I’d again blundered in the way of Skalet’s scheming. Not just any Human—my friend, here only because of me.

  Skalet understood the value of guilt and fear in others.

  She just didn’t feel them herself.

  Otherwhere

  “CRISTOFFEN’S.” Timri laid her hand on the cabin door, as if loathe to let Rudy go through it. Her dark eyes puzzled at him. “Are you sure you want to do this before seeing Kearn?”

  “I want to make a full report—which includes what our friend might have in here,” Rudy said smoothly. “I trust you’ll let me know if you see Cristoffen coming home early?”

  “No problem. Even in a proper shipcity, he’ll call up to the bridge to request permission to enter the ship. Drives Resdick nuts.”

  “Perfect.” Timri stepped to the side. Rudy didn’t move.

  “If you were anyone else, Rudy Lefebvre—” she began doubtfully. At his broad smile, she frowned, then nodded. “Have it your way. I’ll be on the bridge.”

  Rudy waited until he heard the lift doors closing behind her. After a final glance to be sure the corridor was empty, he took out what he needed to unlock Cristoffen’s cabin. Habit alone made him press his ear to the door first.

  A sound.

  Moving quickly and quietly, Rudy unlocked the door control, then exchanged his tools for a stunner. He used his thumb to key the weapon to wide dispersal, a setting that wouldn’t produce unconsciousness in an adult Human, but should drop anyone inside to their knees. If that person wasn’t wearing a Kraal assassin shield. In that case, he’d drop as well.