by Jo Clayton
He uncrossed his legs and straightened his back. “Very sneaky and thorough virus. Hm. It’s hard to believe a Chav invented that virus. They’re not usually so… um… indirect. That is to say, they have few graces not directly related to the extraction of minerals. I suspect the presence of a Freetech and I think I know the man. Family had me locate him and send him out to Picabral not so long ago; I talked to him first. Most amoral entity I’ve ever come across and one of the cleverest at what he does. If I’m right, Koraka has about as much chance of resolving that virus with the personnel and equipment he has here as we have of walking home. It ate through the defenses as if they didn’t exist. All they needed was someone to get it into the system and they bought that. Software’s unusable, the techs are trying to pull something together to get the com going, but everything they try, the virus eats. We are cut off completely for the moment. And there won’t be a ship from Yarakan for another six weeks. They know who it was that the Chave bought, by the way. You remember that phora, Galeyn I think was his name? The one who looked like he had a burr up his nose? Well, he disappeared along with his private flikit. From what I could get out of Oschos, the Goлs is raving, he suspects all the rest of them and is talking of putting anyone who sneezes funny under probe.” He shrugged.
“And he can’t afford sitting there much longer looking like a fool. And if we hand him this business of the cutters and the Chav spy… Gods, that’ll start a shooting war. It’s all the proof he needs, isn’t it. A weapon, a body, a spy he can capture. Active aggression against University residents, stockholders, and a full Scholar as well as damaging Yaraka equipment. He could go under a truthreader and come out sweet.” Aslan got to her feet. “I want both of you thinking about options. See if you can dig up a third choice for us. We’ll meet tonight, my room, see what Shadith can tell us.”
11. The Ways of Secret Wars
1
Ceam stood in the gloom under the trees and watched smoke rising as the mountains burned. The fire the airwagons set was eating toward them, but it was still miles off and not yet dangerous.
“So you made it.”
He turned.
Leoca stood with her arm around the shoulder of her Keteng companion, her face weary. Engebel looked bleached, xe’s lichen brittle and gray. Behind them, in among a patch of half-grown guma trees, the three meloach in their klid were squatting on the mossfern groundcover, huddled together like new-hatched kerrut.
“So I did. You look like you had a hard run.”
“Yes.” After a minute, she added, “But we didn’t lose anyone.”
He took a last look at the peaks, moved into the shadow toward the two once-teachers. “How many made it here?”
“Twenty-three, and you’re one of the last we’re expecting. Eolt Kitsek said that was all he dared take time to find.”
“Had a long way to come. With all that fire, seeing xe was shall we, say a surprise.”
They walked together through the trees with the meloach following silently behind. Ceam took a drink from his flask, offered it to Leoca and Engebel, they declined, so he slapped the stopple back in and hung it from his belt. The flon burned hot in his belly, gave him the illusion of energy, and helped him hide from himself how bad the situation was.
The saboteur klids and the solitary spies met beside a spring that welled up between two roots of the largest oiltree for miles around. A double dozen weary and angry Bйluchar, about half Fior and half Keteng with a scattering of children among them, sitting silent and grim among their elders.
For some time most of what happened was irritated wrangling, none of them willing to give up the right to speak or give way to any of the others; most of them came from different Ordumels in different sections of Melitoлh, some of these traditional rivals. And the times had made them suspicious of strangers. All the rules were washed away. If there’d been an Ard left on Melitoлh, the harper would have had their deference, but most of the Ards had died from heart attacks brought on by unbearable pain or by their own hands when their siolls burned. The few that were left were like Ilaцrn and Danor, crazy or caged.
After a while, though, Leoca and Engebel moved to the center of the surge, touching an arm here, whispering there, spreading a calm, bringing order out of chaos with the skills they’d learned in fifteen years of teaching.
Engebel stood on a root beside the spring, the height raising xe’s head above the rest. “It would be a shame,” xe said, a dark sad note thrumming in xe’s voice. “If we destroy ourselves before the Chave can do the job. You, Ceam, you Heruit, you Deдnin…” Xe named them all and with the names, caught them in xe’s web. “You all… we all have hurt the mesuch or they wouldn’t have done that horror. Cha oy, we
Jo Clayton just have to hurt them more. Heruit, sounded to me like you’ve been thinking about something. Tell us.”
Heruit was a Fior with a freckled bald head and the remnants of a comfortable plumpness. “We started this to run them out of profit and patience. Ihoi! we’ve done the second all right, but the first doesn’t seem to have happened. I don’t really care why, I make this point only to remind you all why we’ve left the center of poison alone. The mesuch fort. I say that is our target now. There’s not much worse they can do to us, so there’s no further point to forbearance. Ard Ilaцrn has done well for us, let us ask him to do more.”
With a slash of his hand to say he was finished, he dropped to a squat on the mossfern.
Engebel pointed a blunt finger. “Rebek.”
Xe was a small, wiry Denchok, thinner and shorter than most. “I think we’re agreed there. It’s just a matter of how we do it. What with this and that, I was run into the Meklo Fen a few tendays ago. Some of my budline are living in there with a clutch of swampies. Saw a patch of hokori ripening nicely in the Meklo Fen, so that’s useful. And there are other things in the Marishes that we can use to fight with. The swampies were telling me about the trading they’re doing with the mesuchs…”
The mention of trade brought some of the listeners to their feet roaring with outrage.
Leoca jumped up beside Engebel, thrust her fingers in her mouth, and cut through the noise with a piercing whistle.
When Leoca brought her hands down and dropped to sit on the root, Engebel said very softly, “Quiet. You’re acting like fools. Xe has a point, let xe make it.”
Rebek nodded. “Xe is right. The swampies trade fruit and dried shroon and fresh fish for whatever they can pry out of the techs and Drudges around the mesuch fort. And they make quite sure that some of these things have dormant chiro spores in them. A portion of the spores will pass right through whoever eats them, maybe contaminate the water system, maybe not, but some will set their hooks. I would not like to be a Chav with chiro worms growing in my gut.”
Heruit chuckled, then he whooped, slapped his thighs, jumped to his feet and hugged Rebek, startling the little Keteng. Still chuckling he stepped back. “What a ploy! What a demondream of a ploy! Who thought that one up?”
Rebek coughed, patted xe’s mouth. “From the little I know, I’d say it just sort of happened. And that is not the only thing they are passing on. But that, while pleasant to contemplate, is not why I brought the matter up. Even with Ard Ilaцrn inside the walls, we don’t know enough about that fort to attack it with any hope of real damage. We need information first. And we need to get it without having the mesuchs suspect what we’re up to. It is Summer Day today. Did you remember that, all of you? Summer Day. You know what that means. Hot and humid and the Scacca wind blowing day after day off the Bakuhl Sea. They’ll start going crazy when mold grows on their hides and every surface around. They’re desert folk, Ard Ilaцrn has told us that. They won’t stay trapped behind those walls. They’ll want distraction, amusement, anything to cut through the whine of that wind and the stink of the mold. I say, think about that.”
Engebel swung xe’s fingers, deliberately choosing a Fior woman this time. “Deдnin.”
Deдnin was a st
ocky woman in late middle age, her hair cut short and mostly gray, her face lined, her eyes almost lost in nets of crows’s-feet. “Before I came to the mountains, they set me to running their whorehouse in Dumel Dordan-that-was, the house that Drudges used. You don’t want to know what a rutting Drudge is like. Male or female. Rebek is right. When the Scacca blows, that’s when we have a chance, but we have to be ready to take it. Before I came away, I saw Drudges and techs both drinking smoke. That’s the trade we can work on, get them so drugged with smoke they get careless. The big Muck, he’s trying to get hold of the trade all for himself, he’s trying to cut off the techs’ supplies, it’s like he’s working for us. Let them think they ashed most of us with the trees. Let them think what’s left of us have gone tame with terror. Let them get real comfortable. Then we hit and we wipe them off Bйluchad.”
2
Brion blinked at the ceiling, wondering what it was that woke him so early.
A moment later Temuen came in with a tray, two mugs of timel tea steaming on it, sticks of husk burning in a holder, a bright bunch of silny flowers in the little vase he’d carved for her. “Greet the Summer,” she sang. Her voice quavered, but it was still as true and sweet as it had been the first time he heard her sing.
He pushed up, made room for her beside him on the bed. “Summer Day already?”
She patted his hand. “You lose count, you know.”
When they woke from the smoke trance, they left the shelter and stood at the edge of the Sleeping Ground watching the smoke from the fires coiling above the peaks. Brion caught hold of a vine twisting about the pergola, weak tears filled his eyes “Why?”
“Because they look at us like we’re bugs. Been stinging them, I ‘spect. Smoking us out, burning us down like we would a nest of chups.” There was a scratchy irritation in her voice as if she’d said the same thing too many times before. After a moment he felt the echoes in his mind and knew he’d stood here, said this, she’d said that, all of it before.
“Sorry. I forget.”
“I know. Takes some like that.”
There was an odd burring in the air. Not loud. Like a cloud of kekads swarming above a lake. The image pleased him, brought up a memory of a time when he was just a boy and dreaming of being an Ard and bonding with an Eolt. He felt again the jolt when he realized it wasn’t going to happen. Fifty years ago, yet the hurt was still fresh. He leaned against the pergola and wept for that and all the things he’d forgotten in the years since.
A hand tugged at him. Temuen’s voice was shrill in his ear. “Come on, old fool. The mesuchs, they coming here. We gotta get away.”
“Wha… where?” He brushed at his eyes, saw the dark blot of the airwagon dropping down beside the Sleeping Ground. He started to move then, but it was already too late. A force of mesuchs came bounding out of the wagon and moved in an arc toward the ground. He turned only to see another airwagon and another arc closing in from the other side.
A grating sound from the first airwagon, then words. “Stop where you are. If you try to run, we’ll take your legs off. Come to the Bonding Court…”
Agitation made Brion’s limbs twitch. The words… they shouldn’t know the words… they stole the words… Muttering his distress, he let Temuen tug him along to the court.
All the other Guardians were there, the young ones and the old failing ones like him. The mesuchs had trapped them all.
The airwagon was still talking at them. He’d missed part of it, so it was a while before he took in what was being said and then only because the wagon repeated it twice. “… will choose four from among the oldest of you, the rest won’t be harmed. You can go on about your business as soon as we leave. Any disturbance or disobedience will be punished immediately.”
A mesuch walked past them, staring at them. Brion shivered as the hard metallic gaze seemed to peel his skin back.
A moment later the mesuch was back. He had a short brass wind in his hand. He moved his claw, a ray of light went out, touched Camach. “You.”
The light touched Sulantha, the oldest of the women here. “You.”
The light touched Brion. It was cold light, but it burned him. He shuddered when the mesuch said, “You.”
The light touched Temuen. “You.”
The mesuch stepped back. “The ones I marked, step forward. You’ll be coming with us.”
At least I’ll have Temuen. Brion took a step toward the airwagon. At least I won’t be alone. He reached to take her hand, but she wasn’t beside him. He turned.
Her face had gone red, her eyes were little and squinty. She got like that when she was angry. And she was stubborn when she was angry. “No!” she shouted at the mesuch. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Brion rushed to her, took her arm and tried to pull her along. “Temmy, don’t, I need you. Don’t. Don’t. Temmy…”
The mesuch didn’t bother trying to persuade her. The light that touched Temuen this time burned a hole clear through her and she crumpled at Brion’s feet.
The marker light flashed out, touched Teдrall. “You. Now. All of you. Move. I will not accept hesitation.”
Teдrall took Brion’s arm. “Cha oy, Brio, what’s done is done. Come along.”
At times during the flight to the mesuch’s place, Brion would forget about Temuen and stare out at the clouds or at the ground moving with such stately deceptive speed below them. Then he’d look around to find her and show her the wonders and she wasn’t there and he’d remember and the pain was new again, new each time as if the horror happened over and over. He’d gotten used to Guardians dying, they did it all the time. Old men died. Old women died. They went into the ground and their souls came back, as Keteng and flowered into golden. Eolt. But those dyings were shared things, with songs and stories and the Passage Feast to celebrate the freeing from the body. Even when young Rudiam had a heart attack when he was only fifty-seven and dropped dead in the middle of a Song Smoke, it wasn’t like… Brion looked out and saw a herd of blackface caцrags spooked by the shadow of the airwagons rippling across the grass, smiled at how silly they looked from up here, turned to nudge Temuen… and screamed, remembering…
The mesuchs drove the four Guardians ahead of them into a small gate in the backside of their fort-place. After passing through a maze of corridors, all rigidly square with glow bands that produced a glaring white light that seared Brion’s eyes, kept him blinking and rubbing at them, a hand in the middle of his back shoved him into a small square room, with walls and ceiling a smooth white ceramic.
The others came stumbling in after him, dazed and eyes streaming from the glare.
The mesuch’s voice came blaring into the room, as hard on the ears as their lights were on the eyes. “Strip off your clothing and drop it in the opening provided.”
Brion blinked, stood staring at the wall, not sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. Teдrall patted his arm. “Brio, take off your clothes. We all have to do that.” She turned, began helping Sulantha with the ties on her robe.
Liquid came at him from everywhere, hard lines that hurt where they hit. Not water. It stung his eyes and had the greasily sour taste of soap when it got into his mouth. Then the water was gone and something like fog gushed into the room. It caught him in the throat and started him coughing. He could hear the others hacking and wheezing.
Then the fog was sucked away and they stood shivering on the smooth cold floor. A part of a wall slid back. A door. Not the one they’d come through.
“Leave the room.” The mesuch’s voice had a weary impatience as if he spoke to really stupid animals. “Leave the room. Leave the room now. Walk down the corridor till you reach the first open door, go through it. Leave the room. Leave the room now.”
Wet and shivering, they turned into the new room to find towels there, gray soft rags with an acrid herbal odor and voluminous white garments hanging from hooks shoulder high on the wall. Brion rubbed his hair dry enough so it stopped dripping into his eyes and sending dr
iblets of water down his neck. He dropped the towel on the table where he’d found it, took down one of the garments. It was a loose sleeveless smock that reached his knees and left his legs and feet bare.
He’d barely gotten it on, was still tying on the cloth belt when the mesuch’s voice sounded, startling him as it seemed to come from the air. After a minute he remembered that was the way it was before.
Sorry. I forget. He said that to Temuen a while ago. When was that? A while ago.
I know. Takes some like that. Temuen said that to him a while ago. Temuen…
“Leave the room. Now. Leave the room. Turn to your left. Do not go back the way you came. Turn to your left. Keep walking until you are told to stop.”
Obediently, Brion shuffled down the corridor until the voice stopped him beside a door.
“Put your hand on the yellow oval.”
It was a pale spot, seemed more brown than yellow to Brion, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. When he set his hand on the spot, the door slid open.
“Step inside.”
He shied as the door slid shut behind him, cutting him off from the others.
“What is your name?”
“Brion.” His mouth quivered. He wanted to ask what was going to happen, but he couldn’t get his tongue around the words. His body was beginning to lose the smoke; his fingers twitched, and a tic pulsed beside one eye.
“Brion. This is your room. Do what I tell you and you will know how to use its functions.”
