Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes

by Castro, Adam-Troy

  but if I stand here and answer them all then kroy’s team will get here while we’re still busy talking and I’ll lose any chance of drawing them away so limited to one anything I asked about himself or the ballet or what conclusions he might have come to over this world sudden madness would have left me frustrated that I hadn’t asked any of the others besides I’d incurred an obligation one that would be dogging me until I marked that account paid so I said how would I go about finding a specific dance pilgrim when the only thing I know about her is the girl she used to be his face fell consumed by sadness Oh counselor you don’t know how many times I’ve had visitors ask me that question can it be done you must have heard how it is with them by the time they get here they’re unrecognizable except by genetic testing and there are more than a million scattered all over this planet a few of them so close to Vlade and body shape that you’d need a full medical examination to confirm that they were born human trust me it’s not worth trying not if this girl doesn’t want to be found I gather that but how would I go about doing it anyway the question hung in the air ringing in the slight echo our words made off the stone walls Royko considered it for several seconds his knuckles turning white as his grip on the rail tightened and then he relaxed all at once offered the little half-smile of a man delighted by his belated understanding of a joke that he should have caught long ago and said well then if it absolutely has to be done

  I suppose that would just be a matter of asking the ones who changed her wouldn’t it the blood pounded in my ears as Royko went back upstairs his footsteps echoing on the metal risers until long after he was out of sight I’d only known him for a couple of minutes and the room around us already felt smaller and darker for his absence I suppose that was because this was his place as much embodiment of his life as his own flesh would be I wondered how much else he knew how much this unseen gyproc knew how long they live together sharing their secrets and finding purpose in them I wondered if I’d ever have a chance to ask them more Tara Fox stared at me too wrapped in her own Curt ways to ask out loud whether Roy COEs parting words had given me any promising ideas they had but I might as well let her hang for a while especially since I had something more immediate to consider I turned to pocketful ania and said you know what she turned weary what I once learned on a case that your Republic outlawed the death penalty centuries ago is that right now she looked miserable it is counselor you don’t execute your murderers your rapists or even your terrorists you consider the practice barbaric and bitterly criticized the Confederate worlds that still indulge but her paths human daughter she’s condemned to death if she ever sets foot on rear Gaul soil again and yet the ambassador is still so casual about the relationship that he drops her into routine conversations why do I find this an interesting dichotomy why do I want to know what the hell she could have done

  paka Fellini I hugged herself looked at the ground and then met my eyes again with a seething resentment I hadn’t seen since Oceans manipulations back at the clinic do you even know I asked not all the

  details she said it is not something often spoken about give me what you have then it took her several seconds to make up her mind whether to tell me or not but I was able to follow the progress of that interior debate up to and including the moment when she decided that she had no choice she stole the young of a sentient species the Villani yes she took an egg why they saw it as unfit and abandoned it to die she thought it could be saved with medical attention she meant well of course but it still amounted to taking the young of a sentient species against its will an act that my government sees as violating the prohibitions against slavery she was told to desist but refused her puffs had no options other than trial in absentia she could never return to rear Gulf soil without paying the supreme price I think it terribly unfair myself she should not have been condemned for her compassion I could only remember the substantial hint the AI source had given me about human beings starting this disaster by saving something that never should have been allowed to live where did she take it but Fox spoke up before POC Vela Nia could answer me mr. porringer by world to face him and wished with all my heart that I had not Oshin had stumbled back against the rock wall

  his features glistening with a layer of sweat that had appeared full-blown between one second and the next his face had turned the color of paper when our eyes locked it seemed to take several seconds before he recognized me as someone he knew let alone as someone he loved whose life he had saved just by becoming part of it he mouthed a word then his irises rolled up and he fell to the floor without a sound

  CHAPTER 10

  The Lost Skye

  There were dozens maybe

  hundreds a thicket of slashing black whips so dark that they seemed to cut the light of the day in half they seemed to arise from the earth itself like creatures glimpsed in a fever and as they swarmed forward to meet the beleaguered group carrying Skye and pathar sea and the other wounded dance pilgrims the Porrinyards could only think that the universe’s patience with them had run out and that Skye was about to pay for the sins she may have committed either as singlet or as half a gestalt she closed her eyes coughed out a cloud of dust and steeled herself for the first slashing pain when it didn’t arrive she opened her eyes again and saw only empty space up ahead it took her a second to realize that the men Eve Lonnie she’d seen up there had not been more attackers but rescuers who had allowed her group to pass and then closed ranks behind them to take on the pursuing enemy she turned her head as far as she could and saw the carnage now receding into the distance it was an insane tangle of slashing black whips and bobbing black heads just barely visible behind the distance and dust shards of chitin and gobbets of segments of limb peppered the air arcing through the Skye after their liberation from the flat of living intelligent beings and

  enjoying a freedom that would end only when they became debris rotting in the hot deserts and there was nothing beautiful about this nothing redemptive that could in noble this bloodshed with the name of art it was just slaughter even in the brief glimpse Skye caught before the gallop of the Villani carrying her brought her to faraway for her to see it as anything but a bruise on the living landscape of lawn the narrow escape left Skye with another concern she’d been able to ignore or focus past the pain in her legs for a while but every fresh bump or vibration jarred her wounds anew and the throbbing heat in her ravaged flesh told her that the beginnings of infection must have started it was nothing a simple nanite treatment couldn’t fix assuming that she could get this body to some kind of medical facility but the caravan was taking her farther and farther away from the access to the local diplomatic community and deeper into a desert that seemed unlikely to offer what she needed after a few minutes their progress slowed as they entered the hills and the terrain underfoot had grown rockier and harder to navigate the headlong spinning gait the Villani had used before now gave away to a delicate trot of a 45 degree grade each fresh spearing of the Earth causing a new avalanche of dislodged gravel Skye happened to be looking down when a tiny quilled creature with a flat tail three times the length of its body darted from its den beneath one of the larger rocks upon the invasion of its territory its squeal of Terror made perfect sense as herve lonny impaled it through the middle of its back and stuffed the still twitching corpse into its mouth without even breaking stride a few seconds later herve Lani followed that appetizer with some scrub ripped roots and all from the dirt it disappeared into her rides mouth without pause for any process that resembled mastication for a moment folks sing on anything but skies pain the porn yards could only wonder just how the Villani digestive system could possibly work after all given the sheer size of the meals she just witnessed how could there be room in that head for both the necessary gullet and the brain let alone everything else they needed to run their bodies forget their danced language remarkable as that was but how the hell was so much biological machinery packed into such a compact sphere certainly somebody among all the offworld researchers had at some po
int in all these years of study found a dead one and performed an autopsy just to see how it was put together there were no doubt any number of papers on the subject in the libraries already written about these things finding one if Skyee survived this day would be first on their list of things to do

  the Villani seemed to glide over the first set of low rocky hills came down into the valley on the other side then ascended and began to descend again without stop there was a monotony to this journey a sameness that began to get to her a singlet in her position would not have known how long this journey had lasted as Ocean who had access to the skimmers clock she knew the elapsed time to the minute but her own body still reacted as if she hadn’t touched earth for an eternity her head ached and her throat was dusty mere thirst giving way to the beginnings of dehydration she called out water and felt the whip harness on her back turning that thought into gestures knowing that they would have to be small and insignificant to the Leviathan carrying her surprised though the Villani seemed to care about what she wanted the entire group slowed at once making its way to the bottom of the current hill and stopping at a gully that must have been home to a river once as the ground was deep with stones as smooth as polished Jade’s the valley walls were just dirt the Skye above them Cloudy with dust but the stones wound a path between the hills marking the place where water had once been for one terrible despairing moment the Porrinyard s thought that Skye had just run up against the communication barrier conveying the idea of water but not the need for it there was no sign of a life or of water nearby but a few fluttering bugs and some scrubby curly leaved orange plants sticking up from between the rocks nevertheless skies Villani lowered her within reach of one of those plants and waited as if the mere sight would tell her what to do she looked around until she found faith Arcee sweaty and Sandy faced but grimly amused in the grasp of her own protector I don’t understand these feathers he said plucking some of the orange growths from the plant nearest to her Arbor Kai their roots go down as far as twenty or thirty meters all the way to the aquifer and on suppose we’ll be near any open water for some time yet but those leaves are the evaporation point drink up the Villani carrying Skye brought her closer to the nearest plant allowing her to pull fistfuls of the curly orange stuff off the vine a light squeeze was enough to send rivulets of sweet impossibly cool water through the gaps between her fingers following the lead of the thar sea and the several other wounded dancers she could see taking refreshment either on their own or with the help of Lani caretakers Skyee brought her hand to her mouth clenched her fist again and swallowed as much of the runoff as she could she grabbed for more less the Villani assumed her satisfied and carry her off before she’d had enough pathar she winced through her own considerable pain just squeeze the water out don’t chew why not this guy asked are they poisonous no but they’re the most powerful natural laxative you’ll ever find you wouldn’t believe how many of us happily swallow down a few fistfuls on our first encounter with the stuff and then spend the next couple of weeks never venturing more than ten steps from the nearest hole in the ground Skye regarded the orange curls with fresh respect I appreciate you sparing me a grim smirk it was a near thing Skye treated herself to another mouthful of Berk high water and another using the next fist of all to irrigate her wounds that felt like liquid fire and she winced thinking of how long it might be before she received proper care but as she worked she called that the Farsi who was squeezing water into the mouth of the dancer with the severed limbs hey thar see the thar sea remained focused on her tasks intent on the dancer she was tending to who had coughed up water turned to mud when it mixed with what might have been a buckets worth of inhale dust what can you take another question about Villani eggs the thar sea shook her head you don’t give up do you no I don’t Skye said and you shouldn’t either I’m not I’m just wondering why you believe yourself in any position to do anything with this information I’m not but this body’s half of a linked pair the thar sea shot her a sudden measuring look so did a number of the other dancers even those who hadn’t spoken before they were a wondrous phenomenon these dance pilgrims whose motivations had fuelled the notorious mystery being studied by so many races but few of them had encountered a linked pair a phenomenon that was just as notorious but a great deal less common that’s seriously fucked up Skye knew she had seconds at most before the arrival of the great perennial sex question the one that always came up in conversation with curious singlets everywhere listen to me I keep coming back to what that Villani danced egg many kill flan ewwww but it makes no sense for creatures as helpless to move or fend for themselves or even to communicate as the ones I’ve been told about to be a threat to anything fourth are C shrugged maybe it wasn’t talking about of Lonnie egg I know but the word egg has still come up in Villani communication a number of times since my friends and I arrived on this planet always stressed as if an egg is the key to this whole mess so tell me assuming an accurate translation how can an egg by itself be dangerous enough to many kilvo on E Ave Lonnie egg can’t be anything pathar C insisted not until it grows its limbs not until it can move or express itself it’s just potential nothing more and if that potentials the dangerous thing what do you mean like if the eggs gonna grow up to be evil or something in Villani terms why not oh I don’t know because the very idea is too stupid to tolerate this is a war Skye said patiently war requires malice and malice suggests the potential for evil or something so close to evil as far as its victims are concerned that we might as well just use the word so I’ll ask the question again is there any way for avalon ii egg to be dangerous the dance pilgrim remained silent for so long that Skye feared she had simply given up on the conversation i guess if you think about it anybody who’s ever worked for any length of time taking care of babies and a busy maternity ward has probably diapered a few who to be rapists and serial killers but

  what does that have to do with anything Skye didn’t know but she felt herself drawing close to something very big something with a terrible shape that could be glimpsed through the murk but did not yet show enough form to be understood maybe were Andrea here she’d know the right questions to ask the right conclusions to draw but there was no time to consult her via Ocean now as her skimmer had just landed and she was busy dealing with this Royko person maybe after Royko left there’d be time for a consult maybe maybe it was time for everything to go to hell because that’s when the Villani all around her screamed a sound of fear and rage and despair as bad as anything that poorn yards had heard at the amphitheater one of the larger blonde e-1 that had been peacefully caring for an injured dance pilgrim just seconds before had turned berserker the bloody remains of its previous charge now ripped in twain and pooling in pieces on the pebbled ground where it stood another Vlade holding an injured woman tried to run out of its way but the crazy one world and with a slash too fast for the human eye to follow cut a slice out of the others great black head the injured vani fell twitching its whips constricting as it died and dicing the dancer had held in two cross sections the rest of the wounded dancers cried out in terror and disbelief and grief and anger even as Skye’s whip harness translated some of the Villani gestures around her into random words like death and fear and pain and maddeningly egg the maddened ones whips world so fast they became blurs a defensive move that made it too dangerous for any of its erstwhile allies to attempt a charge most of the other Villani scattered their graceful forms disappear turning up the slopes on both sides her own held its ground either out of defiance or indecision the maddened ones next move was so quick that even skies nearly instantaneous reaction time was unable to parse the charge as anything but teleportation having the distance between it and her it only stopped because a pair of other Vlade had seized the whips it used to run with their own then and only then did Skyee’s own Villani retreat backing up 20 meters with a single step and then it stomped willing to retreat this far but no farther willing to carry Skyee part of the way to safety but no farther the maddened one by now being restrained b
y four others slashed at them with a single vicious swing that left one of its opponents plummeting to the riverbed granted strength by the force of madness it dragged itself and its captors half a dozen meters closer to the one protecting Skyee another lurched and it halved the distance yet again hers backed up another giant step but only one and then all at once the Porrinyards understood exactly what was going on these vani hadn’t minded bringing Skyee along they were as vulnerable to the call of mercy as any other species but their compassion for her was not unlimited she was not one of their precious dance pilgrims not an integral part of the ballet protecting her remained a low priority compared to the safety of the humans they really cared about which meant that they had no problem brandishing her before an enemy if that kept the enemy distracted from the humans they cared about a slashing black line cut the air in half mere meters from Skyee’s face Skyee’s Fulani backed up again another one racing down the slope wrapped its whips around those of the Berserker peeling its limb back in what must have felt like a last-ditch attempt to control the uncontrollable the fight was more than Skyee could follow the whips move too fast