Fire in the Sky tst-1

by Jo Clayton

  He closed his eyes.

  His body twitched again, he stopped seeing for an instant, thinking, existing… as if for that flicker of time neither he nor the world existed.

  Stunner, he thought suddenly. It had happened to him a few times before, the same in-and-out spasms, the same agony in the head, the blurred vision.

  He lifted his hands until he could see them, saw the comealong strap around his wrists. He couldn’t remember being stunned, but it had to be the Harper. She wasn’t in the flier, after all. I assumed she was. That was stupid of me.

  His ears finally extruded and he could hear again. Voice. The Harper. She had a clarity of speech that made even a whisper travel and she wasn’t whispering. He listened.

  “… no, Lan, we’re in fair shape, but not for walking out of the mountains.”

  Sound of squeaky woman’s voice. Com voice. He couldn’t make out the words.

  “That much, hum? Might be a problem keeping the prisoner in our hands if that’s the case.”

  More squeaks.

  “I think you’re right. Better we don’t even go back to the Vale. The Goлs has agreed about sending a flikit to collect us? Good. We’re provisioned for at least a week and should be able to manage the wait with no problem. Marrin was the worst hurt, but the daggnose in his kit doesn’t seem to be worried about him and now that I’ve got the pressure bandage on my ankle and a little palya in my blood, I’m doing fine.”

  Squeaks.

  “Oh I will. I saw our Spy in action. Oy! he’s impressive. I’m taking no chances with that one.”

  He lay without moving, without threat as the Harper stopped a long stride away.

  “The stunner is recharging,” she said. There was a calm determination in her voice, no anger, no judgment, just determination cool and powerful. “I mean to keep you alive, you know. I don’t need to explain why, you’re not stupid. If you do something threatening before the stunner’s ready, you can’t make me kill you. I’ll just take your leg off at the knee.”

  He didn’t look at her or answer her. There was no need. When she tossed him a blanket and a food pac, he got himself to his knees and sat sucking on a paste tube. He was waiting. They always got careless sooner or later. His chance would come. It had to come.

  18. Nibbling Down to Bone

  1

  Long after moonset on a heavily overcast night, Ceam and Heruit slipped into Dordan-that-was, groped through shadow to the blai that was now Drudge barracks. They took waterweed bladders from the string slings and squeezed them flat, expelling fish oil across the doors and walls of the rambling structure. Ceam dug a small hole, filled it with the last of the oil, coiled a fuse made from an oil impregnated length of vine into the hole and lit the end. He lit the end, tapped Heruit on shoulder, then the two of them slipped along a back street to the lubbot/storehouse where the Chav Muck kept his machines and repeated the process. Ceam set a shorter fuse and the two men ghosted from the Dumel to the fringes of the Fen.

  A few minutes after they reached shelter, they heard a shout and the wind brought them the smell of burning oil, the crackle of flames. Ceam sucked in a draft of air, slapped his hand against his thigh. “Gotcha,” he whispered.

  A breathy chuckle from Heruit-then, “Let’s get outta here before they get us.”

  2

  Leoca and Engebel watched from the fringe of trees as four small forms flitted across the open ground and vanished into the shadow of the wall without being spotted.

  Leoca let go of the breath she’d been holding. She reached out, took Engebel’s hand. “One,” she said.

  It was very late, about an hour before dawn, the time chosen after days of watching the wall patrols. When were the mesuch most alert? When did intervals between the wall patrols lengthen, when did the Chave walking them drag their feet and give only perfunctory attention to what was happening around them?

  “Two,” Engebel said as a small dark lump appeared atop the wall to vanish almost immediately inside, then another and another until all four were in. “It’s holding. No patrol yet.”

  Fighting the pull that was like weights on xe’s bones, Orebli led the other Meloach down the metal road between the heavy square blocks these mesuch used for houses. Heart beating too fast, eyes blurring with the strain, xe counted off the blocks until xe and the rest of the klid reached the airwagon storehouse. It was an open grid with four fliers stowed on each of three floors.

  Orebli stepped from the road and nearly fell over when the extra pull vanished. He grinned and ran to the fire ladder, began pulling himself up. There were no guards in here, what old Heim had said, the mesuch depended on the walls and the wall guard to keep intruders out. They didn’t have enough Chave left to set guards anyway, Chel Dй bless the Bйluchar who died to make it so.

  The four Meloach each took a flier. They brought hokori puffballs from their carry sacks and set them into the lift motors, then emptied small fishgut sacks of bloodworm larva over the seats. The only sounds in the structure were the gusty breathing of the Meloach.

  When they finished they plodded back along the road, too weary to force more speed from their laboring bodies.

  The climbing line was where they’d left it. Orebli crouched, reeling up the inside line, while the others slid down the other. Xe followed them down, shook the line to free the grapple hook. It wouldn’t come loose. Xe shook it again, heard the tramp of mesuch boots and hesitated, crouching in the mass of bushes and weeds growing near the base of the wall.

  He heard an exclamation from the guard, saw the knotted rope go swooping upward. Then a shot. The other three had almost made the outer fringe of the trees. Two of them vanished into the shadow, but Sorhan flung out xe’s arms and fell. Orebli pressed xe’s fist to his mouth to hold back xe’s griefcry.

  Xe crouched where he was, waiting for the shot that would end xe.

  It didn’t come.

  Xe heard a confusion up top, then running footsteps and a moment later, a blatting horn of some kind. Xe flattened xeself against the ground, began creeping along the wall, staying in the muck of weeds and such until xe rounded the first of the eight corners.

  Xe lay still a moment listening, then turned onto xe’s back so xe could look up the wall and see what was happening.

  Shadows flickered, there was the pound of boots. Then silence.

  Xe jumped up and walked rapidly toward the next corner. The night was hushed, waiting for the storm to break, and sounds carried a long distance. Inside the walls there was a mess of confusion, orders being shouted, clangs xe couldn’t place, thuds of feet on the metal roads. Nonetheless, xe was very careful how xe set xe’s feet. Xe couldn’t know what ears might be listening for sounds out of place.

  When xe reached the fifth corner, xe stopped, looked anxiously at the line of trees. Xe chewed on xe’s lip and fought the urgent need to run, to get out of there. The open space was waste land, patches of grass, a bit of scrub and humps of fungus. It didn’t look like much cover, maybe it was enough, though, especially when the mesuch would be focused somewhere else.

  Xe went on xe’s belly again and started crawling, moving from bush to clump of mycota to shallow dip in the ground. The back of xe’s head itched and every bone in xe’s spine and it took all the will xe had left not to look around, just keep crawling, but xe did it.

  Leoca waited anxiously in the shadow under the trees watching the small form creep slowly toward her, sometimes visible, sometimes swallowed by shadow. Hurry, baby. Fast as you can. They’re starting to beat the woods now. We have to get out of here. Come on, Orbi. Faster if you can. Ihol, you’re a bright one, baby. I don’t want to lose you. Don’t want to lose me. Come on…

  Xe reached the woods not far from where she waited. She could hear the sob of xe’s breathing, the soft rustle of xe’s movements. “Orebli, over here,” she whispered, just loud enough to reach xe. “It’s Leoca.”

  Xe came rushing through the trees, flung xeself at her, pressed xeself against her, t
rembling so fiercely xe could barely stand.

  “I know, ti choi. Keep it in just a little longer, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  3

  “Why didn’t somebody know those vegheads don’t trigger alarms? Why was it such a big surprise that three veg kits-Kits!-could waltz right past the guards and not even get a wiggle out of the sensors?” Hunnar slammed his fist on a corner of the desk, went back to pacing.

  Meloach killed because I sit here useless. Meloach hurting them like this. Babies. Wallowing in self-disgust, Ilaцrn sat huddled in his corner, his fingers moving automatically through the soft nothing-music that sat like wallpaper around the talkers while he watched the Ykkuval rampage back and forth while the Memur Tryben sat stolid and unresponsive in his pulochair waiting for the storm to pass over.

  “Well?”

  “I’ve had Chozmek put his techs on an analysis of sensor data from last night. Used your name for it otherwise he wouldn’t have cooperated. No reports yet on what went wrong.”

  “They didn’t notice at the Farm that the vegheads don’t register?”

  “O Ykkuval, you only authorized two men to handle business at the Veg Farm. And one of those is a Drudge. They haven’t had time for anything more than getting the veggies moved in.”

  Hunnar swore and flung himself into his chair. “I’ve got a promise of more personnel, but that waits the next ship from home.”

  Tryben lifted a hand, let it fall. “Which is still two weeks off and, I don’t need to remind you, brings trouble in the form of Jindar ni Koroumak.” He cleared his throat. “There’s something else.”

  “You’ve found the target these weeds were after.”

  “Yes. The flier stack. None of them are flyable at the moment. Not one. The weeds contaminated them with those miserable spores; they’re dust fine and once they’re established it’s like every surface they touch grows a crop of hair. The mech techs will have to take the drive systems apart and clean them. And three guards are in sickbay. Some kind of borer worm. They were spread on the seat, the guards we sent to go after the intruders got in and sat down without checking. Their… hm… organs are very seriously compromised.”

  Hunnar shuddered. “What a foul…”

  A sudden terror put a lump of ice in Ilaцrn’s gut. What if Hunnar decided to question him? If he were put under the probe, they’d know… He glanced at his sleeve. The packets didn’t show. It was heavy Chav cloth and the Drudge who’d made it for him was clumsy with the shears; there was room for two inside that tent. Dй’s Silver Cups, if he didn’t do it now… Kitsek’s daring wasted… that child dead…

  “Grubbers have no honor.” Tryben’s voice was weary, flat. He was going to go on when a bong from the screen interrupted him. “That may be the techs working on the kephalos. I told them to call me here if they came up with something, no matter what.”

  Hunnar tapped a sensor and a section of the screen woke to show a weary, worried face, inner eyelids drooping out of their folds, ears drawn small.

  Tryben leaned forward. “Well?”

  “O Memur, we have something. An anomaly, or rather a series of them.”

  “Show me.”

  “I can’t. I told you, we’re all right on the hardware, but for this sort of thing you need someone who knows the running ware inside and around. Kephalos smooths out the blips as soon as they appear and we can’t get it to leave them alone. It seems to be interpreting them as errors and suppressing them whenever they surface. You have to be here to see them and, O Memur, the Ykkuval is the only one who can authorize entry for major changes in the security ware.”

  “And what do you think they represent?”

  “I can’t say. All I know is it’s the only indication we’ve found. You need to see for yourself, maybe you can come up with something.”

  Memur Tryben turned to Hunnar.

  The Ykkuval got to his feet. “We’ll both go. Tech, be ready to show us what you’ve got.” He tapped the sensor and the screen went dark, tapped another and the lift door opened.

  Holding his breath, keeping his eyes down, his mind blank, Ilaцrn got to his feet, slipped the harp’s carry strap over his shoulder and moved after them, expecting at any moment that Hunnar would notice him and order him back.

  The two Chave paid no attention to him at all, even when he brushed past Tryben to stand at the back of the lift. It was an odd feeling, to be invisible like that. After a moment he was angry, an anger with a base of chill desperation.

  Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just do it. Don’t try waiting for the RIGHT moment. You know what you are. Just pick a moment and do it.

  The lift door opened and he followed them into a vaulted chamber set deep in the earth. The air was so hot and dry he could feel the inside of his nose drying and cracks starting across his lips. The center of the chamber was filled with a mass of metal. He stopped to stare at the thing. It was like nothing he’d seen before, like an enormous junkheap with faint light halos here and there, small screens like glowing eyes-and he could swear he heard the thing breathing.

  He edged closer.

  Hunnar and Tryben stood with the two techs watching one of the larger screen with enigmatic shapes flickering across it. Ilaцrn didn’t understand any of that and the continual repetition of the pattern irritated him. He examined the monstrosity carefully, looking for breathing holes. He didn’t want to waste his spores. He shifted about, feeling for currents of air, moving very slowly, careful not to attract attention.

  “Hakh. I think I’ve got it. Let me have the board, tech.” Tryben settled himself before a sensor paten, blanked the screen, and ran his fingers over the finger squares, calling up another pattern. He touched a square, another, ran the pattern through a few permutations until he had one he was satisfied with, wiped it, repeated the process twice more, pulled up the first two patterns and merged them with the third, enlarging the result until it filled the whole screen.

  “You know it better than I do, tech. Take a look.”

  “I can’t say for sure, but seems to me it’s a lot like the anomaly.”

  Ilaцrn stopped his fidgeting a moment and smiled at the sullen resentment in the tech’s voice.

  “O Ykkuval, if you will permit, an eyeprint will authorize adding this pattern to the Library. Then we’ll see if the anomalies remain.”

  “Do it.”

  Them watched with interest as a curious helmet was brought from a locked cupboard, clamped on Hunnar’s head, a lead plugged into the kephalos. Now, he thought. Do it now.

  He slipped the strap of the harp off his shoulder, set the instrument on the floor. Chel Dй bless, old friend. After a last caress on the smooth live wood, he took the spore packets from his sleeve and tore them open. Holding the packets between little finger and fourth finger, he slipped the sheaths off the air-gun darts.

  Expelling the breath he’d been holding, he cast the spores in the face of the kephalos, leaped forward, drove one dart into Hunnar’s neck and the second into his own.

  19. Fire in the Sky

  1

  Shadith took another length of rope from the storage bin, tied it to a strut on the front seat. She tossed the free end over the limb, looked down at Marrin in his blanket sling. “You ready?”

  His hands were hooked around the crudely tied net that helped support the sling, his face was gray-green with pain, shiny with sweat. “No.” His mouth squeezed into a thin, wry smile. “Get this going, hm. The sooner it’s over, the sooner I can faint.”

  She made a face at him and swung out over the thorn patch, careful to land on her good foot. She tottered a moment, then picked up the staff she’d cut from one of the trees and shaped into a crutch of sorts. She used it to bring the sling rope to her, tossed the staff up to Marrin and carried the rope end to the tethered cow grazer, one of the pair the spy had used as camouflage. She fastened it to the harness she’d improvised from rope and strips of padding, pulled the knot loose on the tether and spent a momen
t scratching the curly black poll while she tightened her hold on the cow’s impulses. It wasn’t a full mindride, she wasn’t looking out through grazer eyes, but she could prod her into moving where she wanted, at the precise speed and direction. She straightened, called, “Ready to go, Marrin. Yell if you get snagged.”

  The grazer leaned into the harness and step by step hauled Marrin from the crashed flier. When he was swinging free and had the staff ready to shove himself clear of the thorn patch, she called again, “Ready?”

  He grunted, set the end of the staff against the trunk. “Ready.”

  Shadith clucked to the grazer, got her to take an awkward step backward, then another and another. The cow mooawwed her displeasure and shook her head angrily. She didn’t like backing up, she didn’t like the rubbing and pressure from the harness, but it only needed half a dozen steps to lower Marrin gently to the ground and the job was done before she balked and wouldn’t move again even with Shadith’s mind-tickling.

  After a last scratch of the curly poll, Shadith used her belt knife to cut the rope off the harness, then the harness off the beast. “My thanks, lady.” She patted the cow on the flank and watched her run off, heading back for the ambush-clearing and her calf.

  As Shadith hobbled wearily back to Marrin, she saw the Chav watching her. Before she moved out of sight round the bulge of the thorn patch, she gave him a broad smile that she hoped irritated him intensely.

  She squatted beside Marrin. “How you doing?”

  “I have been better.”

  “Well, let’s get you in the tent. Then I’ll see if I can get hold of our rescue service.”

  “What about the spy?”

  “He’s contemplating cloud drift right now. No doubt plotting like mad and waiting for an opening to set those plots going.”

  “Don’t leave him alone long, Shadow.” He tried to lift himself and help her move him but his arms had no strength left and there wasn’t even a twitch in his legs. “I’m no use.”